Mannequins with Attitude

When I was a kid, I'd ride my bike up to Eastgate Center in Roseville, Michigan, and roam the toy aisles of a 5&10 called S.S. Kresge and a department store called Federals (which later burned down making room for the K-Mart that Kresge's became). Throughout my high school and college years, I suppose I shopped as much as the next guy, but sometime back around mid-life (after years of living in a house full of females), I lost the "thrill of the hunt" when it came to shopping. It became something to avoid if possible and endure when necessary.

Nowadays if you see me at a mall, I'm either wandering in an aimless daze or sitting at one of those upholstered "pit stops" where people consolidate their findings into the most prestigious bag and begin another lap. Me, I’m working on a different kind of lap—the one with my lap-top on it. Yes. I now write in malls. I shop for observations as I wait to see what my brood has bagged, and my wardrobe is none the worse to wear since there’s always something in the bags for me. I’m happy; my family's happy; it’s a pleasant arrangement.

With my oldest daughter’s wedding just two weeks away, I'm finding myself shopping more than usual. It started several weeks ago when I was fitted for a tux. On one of these delightful odysseys, I discovered a dramatic change. It probably began years ago, but it suddenly jumped out at me—Mannequins have attitude! Have you noticed?

When I was a kid, mannequins (or “peoplequins” as the industry no doubt now calls them) were pasty-peach-colored creatures made of some sort of plaster. These humanoid forms were forced into mechanical poses like the one Dorothy’s Tin-man is in as he murmurs “oil can” through his rusty jaw. Mannequin faces had a pleasant soul-less stare and painted grin that seemed to say, “I’m fake. Please don’t look too closely at me, but do look at these fine overalls I’m wearing. They're on the rack behind me.”

The female mannequins, if alone, seemed poised and friendly and if paired as mother and child, they were as matronly as June Cleaver. The brother and sister pairings looked like classmates eagerly heading back to school—right off the page of a “See Spot Run” Reader.

By contrast, today's post-modern mannequins tower over store guests like pouty models glaring out at the end of the fashion show runway. They don’t speak, of course, but if they did, their voice would be nothing like Dorothy’s or Tin-man’s—it would sound Italian or French—anything but Kansan as they whisper without looking your way: “I look great in this outfit, but then I look great in anything. I don’t think you should buy this—it wouldn’t look good on you. In fact, I think you’re in the wrong department.” If you think I'm misreading their attitude, go to window mannequins.com and click the word video. These mannequins seem starved for attention and sure that they will get it.

The old mannequins had no such conceit. They were plaster and had the dings to prove it. Each of them was as bald as a melon and at one time or another had spent entire shifts waiting for a wig during store hours. How petrifying! Not that the wigs were a big improvement—they clung to their heads like German WWII helmets—and they were just about as hard. (I once cut my finger trying to adjust the bristly bangs of a posed child whose wig was out of whack.)
To get a true picture of how bad mannequin hair was in the 50s and 60s, imagine taking your sister’s biggest doll and dipping its hair in a can a varnish then letting it dry on wax paper for a week. Peel off the doll’s head, and that was the basic style, sheen, and stiffness of mannequin hair. It was that incredibly bad hair that kept the old manikins humble, that made them whisper, “Please don’t look at me—look at the outfit. It will look even better on you. Or look at this pinafore my little girl is wearing. Cute isn’t it?—don’t mind her bangs. Some kid already tried to fix them.”

There’s another reason the old mannequins were humble, and since the vast majority of shoppers are women and the vast majority of mannequins are female, I’ll try to be discreet…. In the old days, if you happened to pass a manikin display during the changing of an outfit, the poor gal looked humiliated. The articulating joints were exposed and the arms were torturously contorted as clothes were wrestled on and off. The really old mannequins stopped caring long ago—sort of the way my 96-year-old grandma acts when she discovers the back of her hospital gown isn’t tied shut. “Is it drafty in here, Tom, or is it just me.” No harm done, because even at their most exposed moments, the old plaster manikins were about as anatomically vague as the portly patient in Milton Bradley’s “Operation” game. (You remember the guy, “Remove funny bone.”) This is not the case with the new manikins of the 21st Century.

Near the end of the excursion that prompted these thoughts, I was writing at a mall waiting for my wife and daughters to drop (as in “shop till ya”). Across the way, in the front window of some trendy clothing store, a young lady was changing tops on four shameless mannequins who just stood there casting sultry gazes at the young men passing by. The men smiled back as if they could hear their French accents through the glass. One girl yanked the hand of her boyfriend, “What?” he laughed, casting one more backward glance. Just then a group of young men with an eye for detail actually stopped to gawk. The window dresser nonchalantly turned her subjects' backs to the window and quickly finished the change. Only after the wolves moved on, did she turn them around to face the public once again. In spite of the drone of the mall, I'd swear I heard the plastic supermodels whisper to each other, “Don’t we look Mahvelous?”

It's sort of sad when you think about it. The need to be clothed has been replaced with the need to be noticed—not cared for necessarily... just looked at. The mannequin industry is the embodiment of this obsession. Millions of dummies are setting our pace, yet they seem so lost. We look to them to know how to look, but they don't look back... they seem to see right through us.

(Note: That last link one-step-beyond CREEPY. Be sure to check it out.
I have a growing "Honey-do" list to attend to between now and our joyous occasion on June 30. New posts may be scarce in the meantime, but read again and send a friend. =)
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Revised former draft 2004. © Copyright: 2007