A doll with cellulite, acne, stretch marks and the proportions of the average teenage girl aims to challenge the 55-year domination of the market by Barbie.
The creator of Lammily, claims it is the first affordable doll on the market made according to realistic body proportions and is the result of a crowdfunding campaign that saw more than 13,621 backers preorder over 19,000 dolls.
The $25 doll – slogan “average is beautiful” – is now ready for shipping: a week earlier than its creator, artist Nickolay Lamm, had promised his supporters. For postage to the UK, it costs $13.95.
“Many people criticise Barbie but there was no alternative,” Lamm said. “Now I’ve made one and when little girls see her, hold her, they feel like they already know her because she is more like them and the people they know.”
Were Barbie life-size, she would measure 36-18-33, stand 1.75 metres (5ft 9in) and weigh 50kg (7st 12lb) – 16kg underweight for a woman that height. A group of scholars once worked out that the likelihood of having Barbie’s body shape is one in 100,000.
Lammily, in contrast, is based on the proportions of the average 19-year-old young woman as measured by the American Centers for Disease Control.
But as groundbreaking as Lammily’s body shape is, her range of accessories will also give any Barbie-worshipping child a jolt: for an extra $6 there are stickers that allow children to add a range of so-called physical flaws, including freckles, glasses, blushing, bruises, dirt and grass stains.
Lamm first made headlines in May 2013 with a series of Photoshopped images of fresh-faced Barbies and other conventional dolls, to show children that dolls – and by association, girls and women – don’t need makeup to be attractive.
Barbie was originally modelled on a German doll called Lillie, who was in turn based on a comic strip character described as a “gold-digging prostitute”.
Barbie, which is owned by the US toy company Mattel, was initially marketed as a teenage fashion doll – the first Barbie doll wore a black and white zebra striped swimsuit and was available with blonde or brunette hair. There is now a range of Barbie books, apparently designed to defy gender stereotypes. But in the newest addition to the “I can be” series, readers are told that Barbie’s ambitions to be a computer engineer are destined to failure: because she isn’t a man.
In Barbie: I can be a Computer Engineer children’s book, a computer programmer Barbie laughs off a suggestion that she could be a computer engineer, with the words: “I’m only creating the design ideas. I’ll need Steven and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game!”
Outrage over the book appears to have resulted in Random House US removing it from online sale – it is no longer listed on Amazon or any other site – but in retaliation, a Feminist Hacker Barbie website is now taking submissions for suggested amendments to the book, to portray Barbie instead as “the competent, independent, badass engineer that she wants to be”.
