I recently became aware of the recent appearance of the “Lammily” doll. The official “Lammily” website describes the doll as “the first fashion doll made according to typical human body proportions to promote realistic beauty standards and help your child develop a positive beauty image!” Here is an official promotional video posted by the creator himself, Nickolay Lamm:
I get the idea behind the concept. The classic “Barbie-Doll” image has always caused girls of all ages to question and doubt their appearances as they strive to conform to this unrealistic standard of beauty. The “Lammily” doll was created in order to combat this phenomenon, showing girls that “average is beautiful.”
However, labeling a doll as “normal” and "average" has the potential to be even more destructive to the self-esteem of girls. Barbie was never presented as an expected yet unrealistic standard of beauty, as the creators of the “Lammily” doll have unfairly painted her to be. The Barbie doll is just that: a doll. Her knees and elbows don’t bend, her boobs have no nipples, and her eyes are sometimes purple. When I was a kid, I had a Barbie with purple eyes. I thought this was awesome, and thought it might be cool to have purple eyes. However, I never thought this was a symbol of beauty and perfection, just like any other aspect of a Barbie or any other doll.
I also had American Girl dolls. While one concept behind the American Girl dolls is for girls to have the fun ability to purchase a doll with similar features to themselves, there is no expectation that these dolls closely resemble human children. Their bodies are made of white cloth while their limbs are made of colored plastic, and their hands are extremely disproportionately smaller than their faces. But there were no complaints about American Girl dolls creating unrealistic standards of beauty for young girls. If American Girls dolls were modeled with the same proportions as real human children, it would be the creepiest thing since Chuckie.
The “Lammily” doll was created using some mathematic method of averaging the proportions of young American women. However, labeling this new “Lammily” doll as “normal” and “average” creates the stigma that the doll’s proportions should be considered standard proportions of women. I think this is so potentially harmful. Not every young woman has “average” proportions that are represented in the “Lammily” doll. Shorter, taller, larger, and smaller girls that don’t exactly resemble “Lammily” could look as this new doll and think, “If this is labeled ‘normal,’ is this what I am supposed to look like?”
Barbie was never labeled as “normal.” Barbie’s entire world is unobtainable. She’s a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world. Life in plastic may be fun-tastic, but it isn’t our world. In the 2000 movie “Life-Size,” Tyra Banks plays Lindsay Lohan’s Barbie-esque doll who has come to life, and is obviously unfit for the human world. She brings spirit and happiness to the people she encounters, but (spoiler alert) she eventually returns to her world of plastic, as that is the world she was made for. Just like any other doll or toy, Barbie is a vehicle for children to enter a world of make-believe, not a representation of a normal human woman.
