Creative practice 

In 1977, Archie Bunker’s grandson doll, boxed with tiny diapers and a tiny bottle, offered the first “anatomically correct” male doll, featuring a tiny penis (“a physically correct male”) that spurted after water was placed in its mouth (Tandem Productions, Inc, 1976). The ads highlight the item as a little brother or a little son - not a little lover with whom to engage in some rough play, not a medical patient on whom to surgically remove an appendage, not an under-aged drowned boy on whom to superimpose sentimental backstories. No. The 3- or 4-year-old girl on the box illustration holds the apparatus (not a collaborator) awkwardly: a doll nearly as large as she is, the tagline declaring without evidence: “A little girl will love playing mommy to a baby boy for a change… especially sweet Joey Stivic with his blue eyes, rooted hair, soft vinyl skin, and winning smile” – as if gender was the only meaningful vector of difference (how about playing with a South Asian or thalidomide baby for a change). Only a generation earlier, the prideful Archie would not have been misplaced at one of the State Fair “Better Babies” competitions sponsored by local eugenics societies.