Last year Nickolay Lamm, a digital artist who graduated from University of Pittsburg, began his “Normal Barbie” project. As many of us know, if Barbie came to life she would topple over due to the disproportion between the size of her chest and the thinness of her legs. Realizing the daily stress that both men and women endure attempting to reach an unattainable body image, Lamm decided to create an image that was more realistic and “Normal.” He started by taking measurements from the CDC of the average American 19-year old woman and forming them into a new doll. He then took this image and placed it next to Barbie; showing us what Barbie would look like if she were a real human. This image of the “normal Barbie,” as he called it, went viral, and Americans all over began asking to purchase this doll. As of then, Nickolay Lamm began a fundraising campaign to make the “normal Barbie” a reality and quickly exceeded his goals. Within a few months she was designed and ready to go. Renamed “Lammily,” she is expected to hit stores in November.
In 1996 Barbie was banned in Iran for being “culturally offensive” and having “social consequence”. For the past 5 decades she has also been accused of being dangerously thin and ditzy in countries all around the world, including the United States. But when push comes to shoves will parents and children actually begin to choose Lammily first? While it is true that Barbie has an absolutely impossible body to attain for many she is a sign of female power. She has held over 150 jobs and is a huge corporation with almost 50 years of market dominance. As we can see Barbie’s body is not the only impossible standard. While there are other dolls on the market, many of them more “normal” than Barbie, none of them have exceeded her world-renowned reputation.
One of Lammily’s main critiques is that while she is more average than Barbie it is not appropriate to call her “normal.” With all women being completely unique from one another no size, race, or appearance has the authority to claim normalness, including Lammily. Lammily’s athletic build and light complection places her in a very small category of what the worlds female population looks like. While her average measurements are a step in the right direction, she is not the end all be all of body image awareness. There is no way to predict what Lammily’s popularity will look like but we do know that she will promote a healthy life style to those girls who do get the opportunity to play with her.
Edited by Kyla Bolden