Sex Doll Specifications versus Human Body Characteristics

Abstract

Sex dolls have been criticized for reproducing unrealistic expectations about human bodies. Yet precise sex doll measurements are lacking in the literature nor has there been any systematic attempt to determine the extent to which sex dolls exaggerate human characteristics. To address this gap, we compared the specifications of sex dolls marketed in the USA with the characteristics of women and men living in the USA. Specifically, we tested if and to what degree female dolls were slimmer (H1) and male dolls more muscular (H2) than female and male humans, respectively. Furthermore, we tested if and to what degree female dolls' breasts (H3) and male dolls' penises (H4) were larger than those of women and men. We also tested if sex dolls' observed race/ethnicity was more often White than that of the US population (H5). In 2023, we collected the measures of all 757 full-body sex dolls marketed by the US retailer SexyRealSexDolls.com. Body measures from the US population were extracted from scientific literature. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed using R. All hypotheses were fully or partially confirmed, which indicated that sex dolls marketed in the USA are not realistic depictions of the US population but hypergendered (H1, H2), hypersexualized (H3, H4), and racially fetishized (H5). Implications of the lack of realism are discussed.

Keywords: Racial fetishization; Sex dolls; Sex robots; Sex tech; Sex toys.