Since spring 2013, the artist, Nickolay Lamm has created the buzz with his project for modelling a doll in the image of young American girls. Last May, he gave Barbie a new body, by swapping her measurements for those of an average 19 year old American girl. In this image, the doll loses several centimetres, and gains weight and muscles to more closely reflect reality.
Indeed, if Mattel's emblematic figurine was real, her neck wouldn't support the weight of her head, and this is far from being her only corporal inconsistency. So, Nickolay Lamm remodelled her to make it sportier, more down to earth and less likely to create complexes. After the craze that resulted from the publication of this proposal, the artist has just launched production of this rule-breaking doll. Named "Lammily", she is fully articulated at the wrists, elbows, knees and ankles.
"Lammily promotes a healthy lifestyle. She is fit and strong. She has style and wears a minimum of makeup", explains her creator on a site dedicated to the doll. "Thus, our daughters can grow up to become happier, stronger women, truly confident and proud of their own bodies".
On the production side, he has received advice from Robert Rambeau, former vice-president of Mattel, amongst others, to choose quality suppliers and manufacturers. Placed on the crowd-funding website, Crowdtilt Open, the project is asking for 95,000 dollars to begin production. To date, it has already found 384,172 dollars, 25 days before the end of the collection. And so, Lammily should be on sale from November 2014.
Niickolay Lamm's observation has unfortunately already been made by numerous players in the fight against anorexia. The search engine, Rehabs.com, specialised in the referencing of treatment centres for eating disorders, recently published an article entitled "Dying to be Barbie", with the aim of highlighting the influence of the figurine on the development of complexes in young girls, from the earliest age. It tells us, for example, that the neck of the mythical doll would simply not be able to support the weight of her head. In addition, her waist measurement is smaller than her skull, leaving scarcely enough space for half of her liver and a few centimetres of intestine.
This same article also compares the probabilities of finding someone with the same measurements as the doll, within the world population, and also within anorexic people and fashion models. According to the study, only one person in more than 2 billion would have the same waist measurement as Barbie. The chances go to 1 in 4 for anorexics and 1 in 5 for top models.
Whilst it carries the image of a strong, independent and ambitious woman, Mattel's model has often been the source of controversy. In the 1960s, she was already giving "dietary" advice to children. In 1963, "Barbie Baby-sits" was sold with a book entitled "How to lose weight", with only the words "Don't eat" written in it. Two years later, the same book was provided in the "Slumber Party" version, with a pink scale set to 110 pounds.
* Illustrations from the Rehabs and Lammily websites : http://www.rehabs.com; https://www.lammily.com
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