14 DAY TRIAL // The famous Mattel doll has often been accused of sending the wrong message to the girls playing with her because Barbie’s proportions are nothing like we can find in real life. For that, we have Nickolay Lamm.
The Pittsburgh-based artist and blogger is joining the conversation about Barbie and her out of this world, disproportionate body, offering to his readers a look at Barbie if she was “real.”
Check out the image attached to this article to see how Barbie the doll would look if Mattel gave her a body similar to that of an average girl.
More photos are found in a post on Lamm’s blog, aptly titled “What if Barbie Looked Like a Real Woman?”
“Some people say that we shouldn't pay attention to the body proportions of Barbie because she is just a toy. On the surface, that sounds like a valid argument,” Lamm writes of what prompted him to give Barbie a makeover, even if it’s a totally unofficial one for the time being.
“But a closer look, through research, suggests that Barbie may lead to the following: Heightened body dissatisfaction among young girls; Unhealthy eating behaviors; A desire to achieve a slim body and therefore eat less,” he continues.
“The Barbie vs. ‘normal’ Barbie images were created with the help of a 3D printed model of a normal woman,” Lamm explains.
The difference, as you can see, is startling: not only is Barbie shorter, but she actually has shapes a woman is known to have (hips, thighs) and has a shorter neck and less pinched waist.
A recent infographic (which you can see at this link) proved that a woman with Barbie’s body would not live much if made to stand because her neck would snap under the weight of her head, as also would her ankles, which are too thin for her body.
She’d also be missing several organs because they would not fit into her tiny body.