If Barbie were an average young woman, she'd look very different from the toy so many girls grew up with.
Barbie would look more like this: a doll artist Nickolay Lamm designed and built to show that "average" is beautiful.
The project started last year, when Lamm, a Pittsburgh-based artist, designed images of what he called "Normal Barbie" in an attempt to make the doll reflective of real bodies.
He used the measurements of an average 19-year-old woman from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then molded them to a 3D model of Barbie.
Compared with the original Barbie doll, the changes are drastic: Lamm's doll is shorter and has more realistic proportions. Her feet are flat, not permanently built to fit into high heels.
Lamm has now launched a crowdfunding site to produce 5,000 "Lammily" dolls, which will feature average proportions, a light amount of makeup, and joints that bend.
He's attempting to raise $95,000 to produce the dolls, but says it's worth it. "If there's even a 10% chance that those dolls affect [body image], let's make it."
"I'll build new clothes and accessories after this crowdfunding," Lamm told BuzzFeed. "My plan is for Lammily to come in different ethnicities and body shapes. But all future body shapes will be of healthy typical women."
"I want to show that average is beautiful," says Lamm.
View this video on YouTube
"I've been working really hard to make the doll a reality," Lamm says in his fundraising video. "'Lammily' promotes a healthy lifestyle."
He says "Lammily" is an alternative to dolls with unrealistic beauty standards that dominate the market, like Barbie, or the hypersexualized Bratz Dolls.
The big questions is: Will kids want to play with "average"-looking dolls?
"My doll is a cool-looking doll that just happens to be average," he says.
He plans to market the doll to kids without mentioning its body type. "Very few kids are concerned about body image like parents are. It would be like me trying to feed them broccoli."
We're yet to see the success of his fundraising campaign, but these are pretty awesome...and actually look like real women.
