Marilyn Mansfield, a tattooed, platinum blond, plus-size model from Staten Island, has turned her apartment into a creepy silent 24hr daycare filled with handmade, eerily lifelike baby dolls she keeps carefully arranged in carriages and cribs.
Mansfield, 33, who is married with three supposedly not so jealous kids, looks after her more than 300 dolls as if they were her real-life babies, changing their clothes, washing their hair and taking them to the park to play.
“I take them anywhere you would bring a real baby,” said Mansfield, who often shocks people with her fake babies. “I don’t do it for the shock value. I do it for myself because it makes me happy. I just loved when my kids were babies — and these babies stay babies forever. I buy them clothes. They never grow out of them and they never get dirty.”
As well as handmade lifelike dolls known as ‘reborns’ that have human hair, weigh the same as babies and cost up to $2,000, Mrs Mansfield has a collection of 300 dolls worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I know they’re not alive, but their facial expressions give them all their own personalities,” she said. “When women hold babies, they release hormones. I think that’s what it is for me — it makes me feel good.”
Mansfield doesn’t leave the house without one of her dolls that look so real they often attract the unwanted attention of baby-loving passerbys.
“People will come over and ask me, ‘How old is he?’ ” Mansfield said. “I’ll try to ignore them. If they keep on, I’ll say, ‘Look, it’s not a baby.’ ”
Mansfield recalls a recent incident at Kmart when a woman said to her, ” ‘Your baby looks a little pale. Is he OK?’… She touched him and screamed when she found out it was a doll,”
Marilyn Mansfield, or ‘Lady Goo-Goo-Ga-Ga’, will be featured on TLC’s new show “My Collection Obsession,” which premieres next Sunday at 10 p.m.
Sonya Thomas, dubbed the Black Widow, scarfed down 181 chicken wings in 12 minutes to be crowned the winner at the 10th annual National Buffalo Wing Festival, in Buffalo, NY on Sunday.
