The “Ella” doll looks just like any other Barbie, except for one thing: She’s bald.
Nicknamed “Chemo Barbie,” the limited-edition doll was distributed in 2012 by toy company Mattel to select hospitals and charities in the U.S. and Canada to help comfort girls going through hair loss from chemotherapy.
As Women You Should Know reports, the doll certainly helped four-year-old Grace Bumstead’s come to terms with losing her golden head of curls as she battled a rare form of leukemia.
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Grace’s mother, Melissa, saw how much comfort the doll (which comes with wigs and headscarves) brought to her daughter. But she was disheartened to learn that Grace’s medical facility — the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles — only had six dolls and would not be receiving any more.
That’s why Melissa created a Change.org petition that urged the toy makers to make more Ella dolls to help kids like her daughter. After three months and more than 100,000 signatures, Mattel actually agreed.
The company said they will deliver a new batch of Ella dolls to hospitals, charities and foundations throughout the country starting in August. They also plan to make new ones annually.
As Melissa shared online, “This means that every year hospitals and foundations will receive a fresh supply of dolls, so there will be more Ellas for kids with cancer like Grace!”
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Tag: Mattel
This Fashion Doll Sets Out to Redefine the Meaning of Beautiful
Move over Barbie, there’s a new doll in town. She has flowing brown hair, hazel eyes, a smooth complexion and a toned, fit physique. She can even move her elbows, wrists, knees and ankles, unlike the iconic (and unrealistic) doll of our childhoods. Not only is she incredibly beautiful, but she’s also exceptionally average. And that’s the point.
Lammily, a doll created by Pittsburgh-based artist Nickolay Lamm, is out to prove to young ladies everywhere that average is beautiful. This idea first came to fruition last summer when Lamm gave the half-century-old Barbie a make-under. Using the Center for Disease Control measurements of the average 19-year-old American girl, Lamm created a 3-D model of “normal Barbie.” He then photoshopped it to look like the standard Barbie doll — long blonde hair, heavy makeup, etc. — and photographed both dolls side-by-side. Needless to say, the photo went viral. “If there’s even a small chance of Barbie in its present form negatively influencing girls, and if Barbie looks good as an average-sized woman in America, what’s stopping Mattel from making one?” Lamm posed to the Huffington Post last summer.
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Fast-forward eight months, and neither Mattel nor any other toy manufacturer made strides to bring a normal-sized doll to the market. So Lamm decided to do it himself. He took the original 3-D model of the “normal Barbie” and improved upon it, adding movement in the joints, turning her hair brown and adding minimal makeup. On Wednesday, he started a crowdfunding campaign through CrowdtiltOpen to raise $95,000 — enough to produce 5,000 Lammily dolls. After just two days, he raised $160,000, approximately 170% of his original goal.
Now the question becomes whether or not young girls would actually purchase this doll if it sat on shelves next to the original Barbie and friends. While Lamm concedes that previous attempts to produce a realistically proportioned doll have failed, he thinks the key is not push the “average” message and instead, let the doll speak for itself. “The key to differentiate is that my doll is a cool-looking doll that just happens to be average,” he told Fast Co.Exist. “Very few kids are concerned about body image like parents are.” And with Barbie’s overall popularity on the decline — despite the fact that she just landed a highly coveted spot on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue — it’s possible that a fresh (and friendly) face could disrupt the doll market, while also proving to little girls that beauty isn’t one size fits all.
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