No Barbie proportions here, this doll promotes realistic beauty standards.
It’s bad enough young girls are inundated with the unrealistic body images of fashion models every day. But even super models don’t — and can’t — look like Barbie, the most unrealistic body image of all time (not that Barbie’s design team seems to care. They blame moms, not their dolls, for girls’ body issues).
Artist Nickolay Lamm wanted to find out exactly how different a doll created using the body proportions of a typical 19-year-old would look from Barbie. Turns out, very different:
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“I created ‘Normal Barbie’ because I wanted to show that average is beautiful,” Lamm says about his experiment. His “normal Barbie” became a mockup for a type of doll: Lammily, a fashion doll that promote realistic beauty standards and a healthy lifestyle.
“The foundation of Lammily is built on being true to yourself in a world that pressures you to conform to standards,” he explains.
And Nickolay doesn’t want that message to be misconstrued: “I see ‘average’ as inclusive of all of us, not a standard which excludes. I want to show that reality is beautiful...and there should be a line of dolls, which reflects this fact.”
And now there is. His Lammily mockup has become an actual fashion doll and is available for purchase for $25.00 on the Lammily website.
(This is the first edition of Lammily, but Nickolay says he hopes to create news versions of “different ethnicities and different healthy body shapes” in 2015.)
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Lammily isn’t just meant to promote a positive body image, she’s meant to promote an all-around realistic life. Which means, as Nicholay puts it, her goals will differ from other dolls who want to be “divas, princesses, and mermaids.”
“I want Lammily’s accessories to be reflective of real life in miniature form. I envision her reading books that inform and playing instruments that educate,” he reveals. “I see her constructing her own home, cultivating her own garden while learning about the wonders of plants and vegetables and eating these nourishing and healthy foods. “
And if that all wasn’t realistic enough, for $6.00 you can also buy “Lammily Marks,” which are clear vinyl stickers used so kids can customize their doll with freckles, glasses, tattoos, and band aids.
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The Lammily Marks also include stretch marks (left), cellulite (right), acne, moles, grass and dirt stains, mosquito bites, stitches, scrapes, and scratches.
So even though little kids might not know the horrors of acne yet, their dolls will be able to reflect the women in their lives. Here is how a group of second graders reacted to Lammily:
And listen to Hilary Duff open up about her battle with body image issues: