Long Line Of Dolls Save Us

We are all just one doll in the long line of dolls that extends as far as we can see in front of us, and reaches back as far as we can see behind us.

Life as a doll is never easy, with a constant battle against body dysmorphia, scheduling (and affording) surgeries a never-ending affair, finding a guy (or girl I guess if you’re into that) to spend your life with, sustaining friendships, building a life for yourself and finding employment as someone who is transsexual… It’s exhausting. Add to all of this growing political despair that many of us feel; that we should try to slow the decline of our social acceptance. It's no wonder we’re all in a perpetual cycle of burnout.

When life gets low-key overwhelming, what can you fall back on? For me, it’s grounding myself in this silly little theory I came up with whilst desperately clamouring for some kind of meaningful life.

The Long Line Of Dolls.

The long line of dolls is a simple idea. That we are just one doll in a long line of dolls. It extends as far as we can see in front of us and as far back as we can see behind us. In front of us, walks every single doll who has come before us, tracing a path and leaving their mark to guide us and open opportunities. Behind us walks every doll who has begun this journey after us, following us and the marks we have left on the world to guide them in their journey through trans womanhood.

The long line of dolls doesn’t act as a framework to tell us how we should live, even though it can be interpreted as teaching us to honour the dolls who walk ahead of us and to live a life we are comfortable being followed by the dolls who walk behind us. Instead, at least personally, it serves to give me purpose for the things I have survived, placing that amidst a bigger picture. This contextualises the things I have endured within the harder times endured by our foremothers and the softer times endured by those who have begun this journey after us.

The long line of dolls gives us a lineage within which we can understand our own struggles, and at times suffering. That the deaths of foremothers like Venus Xtravaganza, Tiggy, Connie Norman, Islan Nettles, Vanesa Campos, and thousands of others weren’t lost to no end. This is not to say that they died for us, in a christ-adjacent manner, but that the raw tragedy is a part of our collective doll history. That even in their deaths they shon pathways that have helped pave the way for future dolls to actualise our dreams.

For me, this framework gives me a purpose, and that purpose is simple:

I simply have to try to walk slightly further than the doll in front of me, so the doll behind me can walk even further than me.

Metaphorically, this means that whatever my path, to survive as long as I can and to live a life that is as true to myself as possible has to be the only goal I have to prioritise. In practice, this means making sure that every decision I make is done with the spirits of my foremothers in my heart. Whilst survival is often messy and traumatising and difficult, remembering that not only did our mothers die for our right to work ‘boring’ retail jobs, to cut hair in a salon, or to type emails at a fake email job is a privilege that we have only begun to have been afforded in the last couple of decades. Is any of this to say that the dolls of today shouldn’t dream of bigger things and brighter lives? No, but it’s to say that for those of us who struggle to find self-worth when our friends, family members and colleagues who are the same age as us appear to be far further along in their ‘lives’, that grounding ourselves amongst the dolls of the past, present and future is always a better barometer of our life trajectories.

On a personal note, there are some silly things I’m ashamed of having done in the past. There are videos etched into the internet of me doing some things I truly wish did not exist. Similarly, there are undoubtedly records of me engaging in some forms of work that I would simply rather forget about, and they haunt me to this day. There’s no denying that I’d prefer it if my time between 21 and 27 was not spent selling sex, shooting porn, doing cam-shows and dealing with addiction and substances to cope with it. Every single time a manager at a civ job (non-sex work job) has called me in for a “quick chat” very specific images and videos I know to exist online flash before my eyes. People who do not understand the very real situation dolls often find themselves in where the choice between taking a client and going hungry will never be able to empathise with us enough to understand that we have not been afforded the opportunities they were to get to where they are today without these scars that can then be used against us.

For those of us who have had to build our entire adult lives as transsexual women in society, comparing ourselves to others who haven’t had to face these choices and problems, will only ever lead to sadness and dissatisfaction with our material conditions. By contextualising our lives amidst the long line of dolls who come before us and follow after us, we instead manage to get a much clearer picture of our successes. Owning a house, having a family, reaching middle management, and our parents being proud of us in the same way they are our siblings are things that most of us will simply never achieve. Fostering communities, helping out the next generation, being able to earn enough to donate £5 a month to FiveforFive and still be able to make ends meet, having reliable access to hormones even if they are sourced from a French transsexual with a rudimentary understanding of chemistry. These are the privileges our foremothers could never imagine. Even as the tide of rising reactionary extremism against our existence continues to rise, these successes -when contextualised against the full scope of dollhood as the long line posits it- provide us with achievements that cannot be looked at as anything other than fucking incredible.

As a member of a certain subgroup of transsexual women, it is very easy to dismiss myself as ungrateful for wanting more, or ashamed for achieving less and having done things that I wish I did not have to. Collectively, as dolls, we are not afforded an easy life. But, in 2025, we are given the opportunity to live a wonderful one.

By tracing our collective herstory, grounding ourselves in the women who took flights to Casablanca, worked on Davie Street and in the the Bois du Bologne, swallowed pills of conjugated horse urine, took grand prize for Femme Queen Realness in Harlem, or even those who tore up friendships and denied ever even knowing sisters they grew up with on national TV so that they could fulfil their own dreams, our position in society within our long line of sisters feels a whole lot more manageable.