Eight months ago, a fashion doll boasting “realistic” proportions made headlines. Modeled after the average 19-year-old American woman, Lammily was dubbed the “Normal Barbie” for not having the mutant measurements of the iconic doll from our childhoods.
After a successful crowdsourcing campaign, Lammily is finally here, with optional acne and all (more on that later). But will kids actually like her?
Lammily creator Nickolay Lamm decided to present his new doll to a second grade classroom in Pennsylvania. And no surprise, the doll was a hit.
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“I like her!”
“She looks like my sister.”
“She looks like she’s a regular girl going to school.”
The students also noticed Lammily’s feet can bend and look more realistic, unlike Barbie’s perma-arched toosties that wouldn’t support the weight of her body.
“I wanted to show that reality is cool,” Lamm tells TIME. “And a lot of toys make kids go into fantasy, but why don’t they show real life is cool? It’s not perfect, but it’s really all we have. And that’s awesome.”
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Instead of high heels, a tiny hairbrush, or a pink convertible, this doll comes with much more interesting accessories. Plus, you can buy a reusable sticker pack to give Lammily some cellulite, scrapes, stitches, scars, freckles, acne and many other real-life distinctions. Lamm emphasizes to TIME that he wasn’t trying to promote an image of violence, “Look, we all get boo boos and scratches. Life isn’t perfect, we all sometimes fall down but we get back up.”
Barbie’s impossible looks, size and even her career choices have been analyzed (and criticized) for decades, but it does seem lately that the 55-year-old doll has lost her edge. Barbie sales plunged 21 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the Washington Post, as young girls are gravitating towards Mattel’s Monster High dolls, Disney’s “Frozen” line, as well as games on tablets and smartphones. None of these toys look realistic either, so girls don’t necessarily prefer toys that look more like them, but they do go for what’s popular and what their friends are playing with.
That’s why there should always be space on the shelf for toys like Lammily, so we can teach more children that average is beautiful and flaws are perfectly normal.
Lammily is available for purchase on this website.
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Tag: Nickolay Lamm
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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