By Nicole Esan, news correspondent
She’s average-looking with plain clothes, realistic proportions and barely any make-up. In fact, there’s nothing glamorous about her, but Lammily has the high aspiration of kicking the skinny butt of the iconic Barbie doll.
Aritst Nickolay Lamm’s new “Lammily” doll, a toy doll based on the average measurements of a 19-year-old woman according to the Center for Disease Control, is the first toy of its kind in a market where other dolls are so contorted that their body proportions wouldn’t be able to support human life, according to Rehabs.com, an intervention services search engine.
Last year, Rehabs published a series of visuals revealing “the impossible physical proportions” of Barbie, claiming that the average 5-foot, 7-inch American female has 13-inch biceps, a 35-inch waist and 40-inch hips. Comparatively, Barbie to-scale would have 7-inch biceps, a 16-inch waist and 29-inch hips. The closest measurements to-scale between Barbie and a real life American woman were the head and bust.
In early March, Lamm started a crowdfunding campaign to bring his doll to life, which garnered more than $450,000 from 12,500 donations – over four times his initial goal of $95,000.
“With Lammily, I want to show that you don’t have to have some amazing body to be beautiful. You’re naturally beautiful, inside and out,” Lamm said. “It promotes realistic beauty standards. It tells you to be true to yourself.”
Lamm said that the doll was inspired by body image issues both he and his cousin faced.
“[My cousin is] healthy, beautiful, physically active, yet she still feels the need to not eat too much because she’s afraid of gaining weight,” he said. “I also remember really wanting a six pack in high school. I lost of lot of weight in order for that to happen and looked terrible.”
As for her style, Lammily will be outfitted with a loose denim button-up shirt that ombres into white linen, darker denim shorts and white sneakers – a far cry from fitted, glittering skirts and stiletto heels.
“I wanted Lammily to wear clothes that Gap or J. Crew might design,” Lammily said in his campaign video. “There’s no reason why simple, everyday clothes design can’t be transferred to doll clothes.”
If the first doll takes off, Lamm said that there will be more to come.
“Right now, Lammily has one doll in its line. My goal is to extend the line so that it’s not limited to one doll,” Lamm said. “It’s hard to project the future success of Lammily, but my overarching goal is for Lammily to be available for many years to come.”
