My Twinn. My God.

My Twinn is a company where you send them 149 clams and a photo of your kid and they will create a toddler-sized doll in your child's image. Paul showed me their catalog some years ago and I could feel my flesh crawling right off its bones. Children are born egotistical, they hardly need further encouragement through props. The only way I could see such a contrivance as a positive step toward mental health would be for a parent to order one, keep it hidden away for those difficult days, then send the real kid outside to play and bash the doll's head repeatedly against the coffee table until you feel better and it's safe for the kid to be around again.

The first thing you do when creating your kid clone is pick an outfit. This is where the concept becomes even more revolting, because My Twinn just happens to sell a full line of children's clothing that match exactly what the dolls are wearing. Yes. They encourage a child to appear in public with this thing looking like Dr. Evil and Mini-Me. Little girls might be taught to go in for this sort of thing, but clearly these dolls and the line of clothing are marketed to hysterical, deluded mothers who truly think the world revolves around their offspring's attention-seeking ass and just one copy of perfection is not enough to go around.

The next step after choosing the outfit is to select eye and skin color. You would think the next part of the ego-run-amok process would be hair color, right? No. Before hair color on the importance chart comes the proper freckle and, ew, mole assortment. A handy tool on the website enables the customer to specify exactly where on the face these are to be placed. I am sorely tempted to order one just so I can dot the thing all over and make it look like I'm raising the poster child for melanoma, or perhaps a many-warted creature with skin like a toad. Nah, I'd probably just send in a picture of one of those third-world kids from the cleft palate hospital with an upper lip split into thirds, the kind where you can see exposed teeth and gums all the way up to the nostril, and see if My Twinn would make me one of those.

Then you pick a hair color, style and texture and submit a photograph.

But it gets even crazier than the love letter to stage mothers everywhere. They also suggest this:



I don't have a problem with a boy playing with a doll if he wants to but THAT, dressing him up in the same outfit and forcing him to play outisde, is asking for trouble. It's quite possible My Twinn has created the first ever Make Your Own Queer kit. I know there's plenty of evidence to support Nature over Nurture, but this sort of insanity would override any genetic disposition toward hetersoexuality whatsover. The straight gene would take one look, say screw it, I'm not even going to try, and order an appletini. Hard-liners on the nature side of the argument aren't going to agree, so let's just agree to disagree, compromise and instead call it a Make Your Kid Get His Ass Kicked In Ten Minutes kit.

Are we not a vain enough society as it is that we can't just give a kid a doll and maybe let imagination come into play? Do we have to reinforce 'It's all about me' instead of letting a kid know early on the fact that, most of the time, it's not?

My Twinn. Making society grotesquely self-indulgent one mole at a time.