So let me start out by saying, I was not expecting this at all. I was super into “The Mandalorian,” and since I’m a writer who likes to share in groups, I thought I would join some cool Baby Yoda groups. That’s when I came across a new group called the Momalorians, which was soon changed over to Momalorians/Papalorians.
I figured hey why not? I’m a mom and I love “The Mandalorian.” So it should be a bunch of like minded individuals posting about the show. Like you know, people with kids that liked to watch the show with them and share their love of Star Wars. Maybe some cosplayers, maybe some mommy thirstposting. [If you don’t know what thirstposting is it’s basically sharing pictures of actors you think are hot. For example sexy pictures of Pedro Pascal or Gina Carano. I mean most of the other Mandalorian groups on Facebook were exactly that.]
I was completely wrong. All of the posts were done in baby talk, and mostly centered around Baby Yodas and Yodaleias; which are the girl dolls that they glue fake lashes onto. Some of these “children” you can even follow on Instagram but I don’t want to post any images here because I don’t want them to get followed and trolled on.
First I thought hey, maybe people are doing this because they had a pregnancy loss. So I asked in the group if that might be the case. No one responded to that, and basically the general consensus was that they just liked to pretend they had babies. Grown adults playing with dolls, not the weirdest thing right? It was more the baby talk that made me cringe.
For example the “choccy milk” and “chicken nuggies.” Bedtime with “widdle pickle” and other sayings were not really the type of thing I liked to see. “I got adopted, Dwivy Dwiving home to meet big brotter” is another example of how they tend to take the baby talk to another level.
Of course that could be because when raising my daughter we never spoke baby talk to her. It’s not a cute thing to do and can actually be developmentally detrimental to their speech. So it’s not a thing I ever latched onto. I would personally feel bad if these Baby Yodas were taught to speak in such a manner considering “The Child” is supposed to be fifty and probably would have the problem of people not taking them seriously because of their appearance. You know how people talk down to you when they think you’re stupid and young? Anyway…
I thought some of the transformations of the dolls were really cool though. Some of these members were gluing eyelashes on sure but they were also sculpting legs and feet that did not come initially with the stuffed Hasbro doll. I mean just check out this amazing paint job one member did.
I also want to make it clear that I know that some people are using the doll as a way to deal with depression and anxiety, and I am fully for that. Some others are battling health issues and maybe they can’t have kids. That’s another reason that it’s a good place to join if you love baby yoda. But if you are going into this thinking that you will be with other parents and you can discuss your love of raising your kids in a super cool Star Wars friendly environment, you’re probably going to feel a little out of place.
As a completely different side note, my kid actually enjoyed watching me dress up the doll and pose it for those pictures. So I guess it at least has that going for it. Now to put it back to its original form and put it back on the display shelf.
