Extremely Lifelike Dolls Cause a Frenzy in Brazil

New York Times

09-06-2025

A young woman posts a video that appears to show her holding her baby, Bento, and packing his bag for a trip to the hospital. She calls it 'one of the busiest and scariest days for me.'
She grabs onesies, a bottle and medical documents and tucks him in the back of a car. At the hospital, he is weighed and lies in a bed, where she removes his pacifier, bottle-feeds him and wipes a few drops of formula from his cheek.
But this was not an actual medical emergency — it was role-playing by a content creator — and the baby was not a real baby. It was a shockingly lifelike doll, called a reborn doll, which is handcrafted to look and feel like a baby.
The video, which received more than 16 million views on TikTok, is part of a social media craze that has turned into a cultural and political flashpoint in Brazil. Widely circulated videos show women taking the hyperrealistic dolls to the park in strollers, celebrating their birthdays with cake and songs, and simulating childbirth. (A select few even simulate the dolls' having a nosebleed or potty training.)
'The ones I like the most are the newborns,' said Juliana Drusz Magri, 36, who lives in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná, and works in human resources. She said she began collecting the dolls in 2018 and now has 22.
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