CLOSE-UP

Marsha Bentley Hale is a bodybuilder--in the purest sense. The Santa Monica native will scour the globe for the perfect wax arm or a unique dressing form. So far, she’s bought and been given 150 figures, more than 5,000 photographs and stacks of historical data.

For Hale, collecting mannequins is “like doing a genealogy of this incredible extended family.” Her collection, which is strictly of fashion mannequins, includes all shapes, sizes and colors, some as old as a 122-year-old French papier-mache head. Although Hale is shy about naming favorites, she is partial to a pregnant mannequin that she bought in Los Angeles a few years ago, when Vanity Fair’s recent Demi Moore cover was but a gleam in Tina Brown’s eye.

It’s not an inexpensive hobby. In her quest to establish the first public mannequin museum in the United States, Hale has toured factories, museums and libraries in 12 countries. But her job as an animation archivist pays the bills. And some of her dummies have gone to work--she served as technical consultant for the 1987 movie “Mannequin.”

Hale, who is writing a book on her research, sees mannequins as sociocultural yardsticks, reflecting trends and lifestyles in popular culture. “In the ‘40s, female mannequins had nipples. Then society’s morals changed, and the nipples were sanded off or weren’t present during the ‘50s. Ten years ago, female mannequins were anorexic, now female mannequins are sculpted with muscle tone, mirroring our obsession with fitness and working out.”