dollhouse dialectic

My husband and I are the only couple I know who can manage to get into a discussion involving art, colonial mentality, and religion in the process of outfitting a little girl's dollhouse.


It started out with Dean complaining about the lack of pure aesthetics in Sage's dollhouse. "Where are the paintings?" he wanted to know. "Why is everything so boringly functional? Where are the stunningly impractical stone-and-glass sculptures by Impy Pilapil?" He then went on to critique the English-country mode of the decor: "Don't we have a resposibility to inject some Asian influences into our daughter's abode of the imagination?"


I conceded that perhaps he did have a point or two, and suggested The Museum Shop as a possible source of problem-solving miniatures. So we hied off to Megamall; but unfortunately, all we were able to find in the appropriate Lilliputian scale was a tiny representation of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh. "It's perfect!" Dean enthused. "It could be something the doll family picked up in their world travels."


"It's ugly," I pointed out.


"It's not ugly; it's exotic!" he protested. "We could put it in the study."


"We could do that," I replied patiently, "if it weren't so ugly. Which it is. Which is why we won't."


Dean was aghast, but I was adamant. The only way I would agree was if we glued a chunk of crystal to Ganesh's head, thereby approximating one of the aforementioned Impy Pilapil sculptures. Dean thought this was a cosmically disrespectful concept, so we ended up leaving the store, Ganesh-less and bickering. "Just you wait," Dean warned me. "If we find out in the afterlife that Hindu mythology was the one true religion all along, I'm not going to help you explain to Lord Ganesh why you wanted to stick a rock on top of his sacred head."


I shrugged. "I'll tell him, 'I'm deeply sorry, Lord Ganesh... but it was ugly.'"


We ended up with a pair of jade temple dogs that I picked up in a knickknack shop. I'm not sure if Sage appreciated the amount of philosophical consideration that went into her latest decor item.