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The year is 2014. Your parents have finally allowed you to browse the internet without supervision. What is the obvious next step? Stumbling upon a community of older women on the internet unapologetically sharing their love of a "weird" hobby, of course!

I specifically think it was this photo by Flickr user JennWrenn, found by chance via Google Images that sent me down the Blythe rabbit hole. I was fascinated, then obsessed! This doll was so cute, with a funny backstory and women and others all over the world were using it as a way to express themselves.

The hub for Blythe back in the day was mostly Flickr but also Blogger and Wordpress (before that I think it was livejournal and forums?). I spent so long trawling through people's accounts. The groups function on flickr meant there was never a shortage of pictures to look through. Doing this, I learnt about all kinds of other dolls and my own collection grew.

My Blythe dolls in 2024

I didn't directly interact with the community much, since I was so young. Luckily, my best friend at the time loved Blythes too, so I didn't feel alone or like I had to bottle up my weird obsession. It's been a long time since then (10 years...) and doll collecting is no longer right at the front of my mind like it was when I was a young teen. But that's ok! I will always treasure my dolls and my memories with them. To this day they hang out on my shelves and I see them everyday. I always wondered whether I would look back and regret spending so much of my time on doll collecting and to be honest, I truly don't.

Nowadays, the hub for Blythe collecting is Instagram, which I don't use anymore. This means I have no idea what the current state of doll collecting is. Or I didn't, until I came to the horrifying realisation that Blythes were... trending? Among people my age??? It was shocking for sure, but it gave me a push to make this page, since a whole bunch of nostalgia came flooding back! I have so many pictures from this time in my life, it seemed a shame to have nowhere to put them. I also miss the era of blogging so much, so I made this page a tribute to the ~aesthetics~ of that time. I hope you enjoy looking through it!

My Blythe dolls in 2014