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October 17, 2014
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Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Follow on Twitter @symbiartic.
Nobody goes around saying they want to look like Barbie when they grow up, at least not anymore. But with Halloween fast approaching, I dare you to find a class of kindergarteners that does not have at least half the girls planning to be princesses of some sort or another. If the princess craze doesn’t make you want to yell out your window at the throngs of trick-or-treaters, “Hey, girls! Let. It. Go!” it might at the very least make you wonder what this type of obsession does to our girls’ body images. After all, Elsa and Anna may be “modern women” in that they value their sisterly love over the fairy-tale ideal of a handsome prince charming, but their physical proportions are still eerily close to that 50′s icon we all know and love: Barbie. Really, Disney? Are we still stuck on the impossibly thin-waisted, big-boobed, bobbleheaded ideal of beauty? When can we let that go?
Artist Nickolay Lamm, inspired by his own and his relative’s struggles with body-image issues, wondered what Mattel’s Barbie doll would look like if she weren’t such an anatomical freak. If you’ve never laughed about Barbie’s ridiculous proportions or gotten angry at the impossible standards we set for little girls, google “photoshopped celebrities before and after” (or check out this animated gif of Britney Spears) to see how practically all the images we are bombarded with in advertising and entertainment are “enhanced,” presumably to separate us from who we should be striving to be in the name of buying more crap we don’t need. But back to Lamm: he took the measurements of a real, healthy 19-year-old and sculpted a digital model that he could print out for a side-by side comparison with the busty, blonde icon. The results put Barbie in a new light:
Encouraged by the response to his Barbie project, Lamm was inspired to create a doll with a body-type that is much closer to attainable for many more girls than the ridiculous ideals the fashion and beauty industries peddle. Lamm’s efforts took off as the Kickstarter campaign he launched in May reached its goal in 24 hours and has sold 19,000 dolls to date. And Lamm doesn’t want to stop there. He envisions creating many more ethnicities, body types, shapes and sizes, for men as well as women. You can pre-order the Lammily doll here, or follow her on Facebook. Nickolay Lamm’s other projects can be found on his website. Now if he could only wrap his cast of characters up in an award-winning musical animation and pump it through the Disney marketing machine, he might just create an empire of real beauty.
The new normal? Lammily!
About the Author: Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Follow on Twitter @symbiartic.
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I will not argue that it is bad for girls to grow up wanting to look like Barbie because of course it isn’t going to happen more for more than one girl out of a thousand.
But let’s just face up to a little bit of reality here. Women want athletic men tall and handsome narrow waisted flat bellied even featured with broad shoulders clear skin healthy hair should I continue? Everybody should have the idea by now.
Being a man and about as far from politically correct as it is possible to be I can and will say that men dream about women who look very much like Barbie.
And the only real reason there is for a woman or woman to be to want to be ” beautiful” is so that she will be able to attract a beautiful man.
This is straight up basic biology.
Any body who believes otherwise is free to go out on the street any place at all in the Western world and look at which women are to be seen with which men.You will find the occasional attractive woman with a fat guy but you can safely bet he got fat after he got her.
It is almost unheard of to see a very handsome man married or dating a truly unattractive woman. It is not common to see a truly attractive woman married to a truly unattractive man but it does happen because a few women marry for money and status.
Is it really strange that little girls intuitively understand that Barbie is going to get KEN? Women who look like Angelina Jolie date men who look like what’s his name her husband.
Has anybody who gets his or her undies in a bunch about Barbie ever bothered to notice that the dolls boys play with are caricatures of masculinity in the same way that Barbie is of femininity?
Look at the dolls that boy play with. Remember they are called action figures if they are for boys but they are dolls just the same.Is GI JOE short and fat?Is the HULK a ninety eight pound weakling?
Having said all this IF I had a little girl I would do my best to keep her from feeling down and out about her looks and try to help her have plenty of confidence in herself and her value as a person no matter what she happened to look like.
But trying to change what men think of as beautiful is a waste of time. We are born programmed to like Barbie.Our programming is flexible enough that when times are tough as during famines and plagues we will choose a plump girl with rosy cheeks over a pale skinny one with stringy hair but that is about the limit of our conscious decision making when it comes to selecting a mate at the age the hormones are raging.
And even young girls are smart enough to understand that and since women want men ….. well girls learn young that life is all about growing up and having kids in most cultures.
THAT is something that might possibly be changed. Women very fortunately have more options these days.
(If women did not desire men we most certainly would not have an OVER population problem lol.)
I hope the dolls that are more realistically shaped continue to sell well.
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