About
Female Maskers, also known as Living Dolls, are men who wear wigs, women’s clothes and masks of female faces in order to mimic the appearance of dolls.
Origin
The female latex mask hub site Maskon[2] was launched in 1996, which hosts several webpages for female mask sellers.
Spread
On September 28th, 2003, Metafilter[7] user soundofsuburbia posted a link to the Maskon website. On November 4th, 2004, the female mask retail website PhotogenicMask[6] was launched, which includes versions in Japanese, English, Chinese and Taiwanese. On October 6th, 2006, Cross Dressers Forum[5] member whisky12 submitted a thread asking for recommendations for female latex mask sellers. On February 27th, 2007, a group photo page titled “Female mask group” was created on the photo-sharing site Flickr.[3] On June 20th, 2010, the silicone female mask retailer Celesmask[4] launched their official website. On June 29th, the Celesmask YouTube channel was created, featuring videos of the store’s products (shown below).
On January 18th, 2011, Psychology Today[8] published an article in which clinical psychologist Ray Blanchard characterized the desire to wear female latex masks as a “fetish.” On December 20th, 2013, the British public-service television broadcaster Channel 4 uploaded a clip from an episode of the documentary “Secrets of the Living Dolls” (shown below), in which a man describes his experience of cross dressing and wearing female masks. On January 6th, Channel 4[10] aired the full documentary, which was watched by 2.3 million viewers. Within 48 hours, the hashtag “#livingdolls” was tweeted over 34,000 times according to the Twitter analytics sites Topsy.[9]
On the same day, Redditor ewybradyy submitted a photograph of a man wearing a female mask (shown below, left) to the /r/WTF[12] subreddit, where it received upwards of 13,000 up votes and 810 comments in the first 24 hours. On January 7th, BuzzFeed[11] highlighted several animated GIFs made from scenes in the documentary (shown below, right). In the coming days, several news sites posted articles about the documentary, including Gawker,[13] NY Daily News[14] and The Daily Dot.[15]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wayback Machine – Female Mask Homepage
[2]Maskon – Welcome to Maskon
[3]Flickr – Female mask group
[5]Cross Dressers Forum – latex masks
[6]Photogenic Mask – Photogenic Mask
[7]Metafilter – Female latex masks? Female latex masks!
[8]Psychology Today – Fetish or Orientation? The Case of Men Wearing Female Masks
[9]Topsy – #livingdolls
[10]Channel 4 – Secrets of the Living Dolls
[11]BuzzFeed – Most Bizarre Moments From Secrets of the Living Dolls
[12]Reddit – Maskers – Men who dress in rubber suits of female dolls
[13]Gawker – This documentary about men who dress up like rubber dolls is amazing
[14]NY Daily News – Documentary followers men who masquerade as plastic dolls
[15]The Daily Dot – Dudes wearing female doll masks is already 2014s weirdest fetish