The Barbie doll has been a favourite for little girls since its debut in 1959. Basically, she’s the ‘perfect’ girl.
But, that perfection means that Barbie has given unrealistic standards for little girls and even older women. She doesn’t look like the average girl, and that makes many girls very self-conscious about their own bodies.
It looks like that’s about to change. Pittsburgh-based artist Nickolay Lamm has decided to create an average Barbie doll he has named the ‘Lammily’ doll. Lamm has modeled his doll to look like the average 19-year-old woman.
“Average is beautiful,” says Lamm.
The idea of the normal Barbie began last year when Lamm designed images of what he believed was a realistic-looking Barbie, in order to try to make the doll really look like an average woman. Lamm’s design soon went viral, so he began to work on creating the doll. He took measurements from an average 19-year-old woman from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then created a 3D model out of it.
Lamm’s new normal Barbie is shocking in comparison with the original Barbie doll. Lamm’s doll’s feet are flat, her body is shorter, and she has more realistic proportions. Now, Lamm has created a crowdfunding site to produce 5,000 Lammily dolls. Lamm is attempting to raise $95,000 to produce the dolls.
“If there’s even a 10% chance that those dolls affect [body image], let’s make it.”
Lamm is planning on creating different types of Lammily dolls with different races and body shapes. Lamm has also created stickers to go along with his doll to make her more realistic. These stickers include things such as stretch marks, tattoos, freckles, acne and more.
“Now your dolls can have freckles, acne, cellulite, the occasional booboo, and more! These clear vinyl stickers can be repositioned and reapplied to customize your doll,” says Lamm’s website description on the stickers.
But the question is whether kids would actually want to play with an average looking doll or not, so Lamm has planned to market his doll without mentioning her body type.
“Very few kids are concerned about body image like parents are. It would be like me trying to feed them broccoli,” says Lamm.
What do you think? Would you have played with a Lammily doll as a kid?