Meet The Men Who Dress Up Like Latex Dolls
It's called 'female masking.'
Natalya Biryukova / Shutterstock Everyone has some hobby, whether it’s big or small. While most of us are familiar with trading baseball cards, reading love novels, and knitting, very few people know about female masking, where hobbies turn into fetishes.
Thousands of people all over the world participate in this hobby, all of them men. Female masking essentially is where men dress up as latex dolls (usually older men). They wear a second skin accompanied by inflatable breasts, a full face and body mask, and a wig and latex costume.
A typical latex doll suit weighs between 5 to 10 kilos, and an entire outfit, depending on the accessories, can cost around 5,000 Euros. The latex persona is so time-consuming to put on and take off that the dolls will wear diapers if they need to go to the bathroom.
This expensive hobby started in the 1980s when a man from England made latex masks for the Batman movies. He began experimenting with female masks, and because of the internet, this latex doll community began to take shape.
The founder of the community, Hank Netto, says that thousands of men dress up as latex dolls worldwide. Hank is one of the most famous figures in the female masking community, and his favorite doll persona is Kim, the French maid.
He transforms into Kim daily, usually to do his housekeeping. While Kim is his go-to doll, Hank has hundreds of boxes, all filled with costumes, which he stores in his home. He even has a written directory that helps him find his costumes amongst the piles of boxes.
Hank says that he started female masking because he didn’t like his own face. He wanted to be another person, especially a woman. Being a perfectionist, he enjoys the beauty and precision of the dolls he becomes. His sisters often dressed Hank up as a girl as a child, and he realized he liked it.
Photos and videos of the transformation are extremely important to the female masking community. Hank explains that documenting and sharing on online forums is important for the journey.
Hailing from Germany, another female masker, Goetz, is a married man who often turns into the doll Tessa. While married, he likes to drop his masculinity to be the more vulnerable Tessa. Goetz says that it feels great to dress as a doll because he doesn’t have to be tough. Allowing himself to feel gentle and express his more vulnerable feelings is a release for him.
Goetz keeps his female masking mostly private, but he dresses as Tessa once or twice a year and attends events with other latex dolls. He likes the attention he gets as a doll and feels beautiful and desirable while in public.
Wanting to challenge himself, Goetz planned to visit a female masking acquaintance, Catrina, for a photo shoot with the famed Madieanne in Amsterdam. This dominatrix has worked with the founder, Hank, for years in developing the female masking community. She’s so famous, in fact, that men travel from around the world to get made into a doll by her.
She even has her own personal doll, whom she controls, deciding when the doll can speak. Her dominatrix side often comes out by the way she spanks or calls visiting doll whores. According to Madieanne, female masking is a way for men who aren’t attractive to feel desirable again.
While Goetz and even Hank have decided to tone down their female masking, it’s still one of their deepest passions. However, they say that dolls need someone to play with and animate them like real dolls. Without that, they are left wanting more out of this strange hobby.
Shannon Ullman is a writer who focuses on travel and adventure, women's health, pop culture, and relationships. Her work has appeared in Huffington Post, MSN, and Matador Network.