Lammily: Average Beauty

So would I. And I'd like him to do a black Barbie with natural African-American hair next .

Lammily is awesome. And needed.

People make such a big deal over Barbie's proportions, but they don't account for those proportions being what literally held the doll's clothes on when she was first manufactured. The exaggerated measurements made it easier for kids to switch out her clothes, which were sewn to be more like "real" clothes, rather than doll clothes.

She's a toy, not a role model.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I thought the exaggerated measurements were because she was a pirated version of a German novelty doll sold mainly to adult male sailors.

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The doll's face and body were styled after the Lilli doll, but her measurements had to be altered to keep the clothes on. Barbie's fabrics weren't the same as the thinner, cheaper ones used on pretty much every other doll out there, and they wouldn't behave on the not-baby doll body. They shrunk the waist and neck circumference, and exaggerated the hips and bust so that the fasteners would hold securely and the garments wouldn't "slip" during play.

She was meant to representative of a fashionable teenager, per the designer's wish to make a doll for her daughter. But thanks to the face being taken from the other doll, she's never looked very teenaged.

I like this! I'm interested (and dreading a little bit) to see what the response from children will be to this Barbie alternative.

I like the Lammily doll. I hope it catches on.

I was never much of a Barbie fan, but I did learn the precursor skills to haute couture sewing helping my cousins make clothes for their dolls. Had to make lots of tiny, flat seams.

I'd also heard that the body design was about the clothes, but not that they helped the clothes 'stay on' (although the tiny little hands and feet make in much, much easier to get the clothes on). The way I heard it, the skinny neck and waist was so that layers of waist-bands and collars wouldn't leave her looking like a stuffed doll.

I've seen various attempts at more realistic teenage bodies over the years, all flopped, as far as I know. There was one a few years ago with a range of teenage girl dolls, each playing a different sport.
I don't think it's that children don't like the realistic figures (they played with homemade cloth and wooden dolls for generations, I think that's more of a parental concern) but that there's that uphill battle to provide the 'stuff' that Barbie has acquired. Lammily doesn't look as though she will fit Barbie's furniture, or accessories. Lammily comes with a couple of outfits - where are the changes of clothes, or the patterns to make your own stuff? Where is the furniture (please, nice looking furniture, not all pink.)
Is any of this stuff in the works, or are they just trying to sell dolls, assuming that the other stuff will come? Or, if they're trying to encourage people to make stuff for Lammily (a praiseworthy goal in itself, in these video-watching, buying rather than creating days) prime the pump: offer a few basic clothes patterns (because nothing in the popular '11 1/2 inch fashion doll' size will fit), and a pattern for a bed and a chair, at least.

The American Girls dolls are a different size and type of doll, but there are all sorts of third-party patterns and outfits, furniture, etc. out there.
The Sunshine Family, while more about family doll-play than a theoretical teenager, had less 'modelly' proportions, and bravely hung in there for quite a few years. They, to, had 'stuff'.

On a more practical note, I'd like to know how the joints on this doll work: if a nice, 'skin'-covered joint fails, it's almost impossible to fix without mangling the limb.

StormChord said:

I'm interested (and dreading a little bit) to see what the response from children will be to this Barbie alternative.

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"Mommy, she should hit the gym!"

"No dear, dolls can't lose weight. They are consigned to their proportions, for better or worse, for the entirety of their existence. Speaking of hitting the gym, your beauty pageant is coming up. Why are you eating dinner today? Gag now or you're grounded!"

It's still a normal, thin doll. I don't get what the uproar and 'reactions' could be about it, especially from children.

Rina Evans said:

It's still a normal, thin doll. I don't get what the uproar and 'reactions' could be about it, especially from children.

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The normalcy is the point. Because she's normal, Lammily doesn't conform to the modern, distorted ideals of beauty. I'm curious to see how children raised with a Barbie would respond to a doll that, in comparison to Barbie's gorgeous anatomical impossibilities, looks stumpy and heavyset. Would the beauty in normalcy show through, or has the visual distortion become so ingrained that even children see normalcy as ugly?

SomethingOrOther summed it up quite nicely. That's exactly the response I'm dreading.

Cyia said:

People make such a big deal over Barbie's proportions, but they don't account for those proportions being what literally held the doll's clothes on when she was first manufactured. The exaggerated measurements made it easier for kids to switch out her clothes, which were sewn to be more like "real" clothes, rather than doll clothes.

She's a toy, not a role model.

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This pushes a button for me.

It's like when people say, "what are you so upset about? It's just fiction."

It's just a TV show. It's just a movie. It's just a book. It's just a toy. It's just an ad. It's just a constant systemic bombardment of false body ideals or damaging stereotypes or insidious, demoralizing assumptions. About race, about sex, about weight, about gender identity or sexual orientation or disability or any other of a zillion things that popular culture does rampant disservice to.

We're writers. We know how affecting fiction can be. We know its power.

Entertainment, media, popular culture, these things impact how we see the world. These things get in our heads. We live in a world where white men WITH a criminal record are more likely to be called in for a job interview than identically-qualified black men WITHOUT a criminal record. Where a crowd scene that's 83 percent male is literally perceived as half men and half women, and where a space that's only 1/3 women is seen as female-dominated. Where 20 million American women (and 10 million men) have eating disorders. Where a small child can tell her mother in all earnestness that a "princess" can't have brown skin like her, because "princesses" have blonde hair and blue eyes.

I could go on. And on. And on. And on. And on.

These things don't happen in a vacuum.

It doesn't matter to me why or how Barbie got her proportions. She's still a problem. She reinforces both impossible beauty standards and the blonde-haired, blue-eyed supermodel ideal. She adds to the massive weight of society telling girls they can't do math (I could tell you stories about how my female math students have been discouraged, talked down to, told they weren't good at math even though they were -- could tell you about my two blonde students whose teacher mocked them by calling them "Barbie"). She tells girls they can't handle computers. She's held up as an example of what women should be like, to put down outspoken, opinionated women.

I don't have a problem with people liking Barbies, or playing with them. But I do dispute, strongly, vehemently, the implication that Barbie is not a problem. She is.

She's not the only problem, of course. The problems are institutional. But she's a part of that institution, doing her part to make our overarching societal attitudes worse instead of better, and for that she deserves to be criticized.

Because she's a toy that's a pervasive part of our culture. And part of the culture is not "just" anything.

I agree. Barbie may not be a role model in the sense that she is not supposed to be a role model, but that doesn't mean she isn't one. That little girls don't see her that way.

slhuang said:

It doesn't matter to me why or how Barbie got her proportions. She's still a problem. She reinforces both impossible beauty standards and the blonde-haired, blue-eyed supermodel ideal. She adds to the massive weight of society telling girls they can't do math (I could tell you stories about how my female math students have been discouraged, talked down to, told they weren't good at math even though they were -- could tell you about my two blonde students whose teacher mocked them by calling them "Barbie"). She tells girls they can't handle computers. She's held up as an example of what women should be like, to put down outspoken, opinionated women.

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It does matter to me, and I think you're actually talking about two separate issues.

Yes, there's cultural indoctrination, and yes, the doll lines have had less than stellar productions introduced into them - like the phrases chosen for the speaking doll. But, too many people treat the doll's form as though it was an intentional "You should look this way!" from the manufacturers. It wasn't.

The doll was created to celebrate fashion. She's a mini-mannequin. She was supposed to be secondary to the clothing sold along side her.

Later, after she became a sort of icon, then the careers and other traits were added. And it's at that point that the "problems" started. Barbie ceased to be a mannequin, and assumed personalities and careers, friends, etc. That's the point that she became about the looks of her body-form more than the looks of her clothes. (It's also the point she acquired under pants, because parents freaked over the potential "damage" of kids seeing a naked doll butt.)

The doll she became, isn't the doll she was designed to be.

And as for what a kid will think of Lammily vs. Barbie? I think the answer is a simple: nothing. If the doll is poseable and has accessories a particular kid wants, then said kid will play with her. If it has none of those things, then said kid won't.

Cyia said:

The doll was created to celebrate fashion. She's a mini-mannequin. She was supposed to be secondary to the clothing sold along side her.

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Yeah, to me, this just kind of points out that there very much *were* problems with Barbie from the very beginning. That there was something fundamentally flawed in the worldview of her creators.

And the fashions Barbie wears? I'm no prude, but I would be embarrassed to go outside in a hell of a lot of them. How are her clothes even supposed to be appropriate?

As to Lammily, I've seen a mom blog bash her for not being thick enough to be "realistic," based on the mom's opinion of her own daughters and her own daughters' friends. I've seen others bash her for "encouraging obesity," which is ridiculous. But regardless: Lammily's body shape is achievable by human beings, and I'm sure her body shape is sufficient to hold on clothing. I wouldn't hesitate to buy her for my own daughter, unlike Barbie or Bratz or Monster High dolls... so long as Lammily's clothes stay appropriate. Because honestly, Barbie and the rest dressing like little hookers are my biggest issue. The body shape is not copy-able. But the clothes sure are. And these dolls teach girls that "pretty" is synonymous with, at the very least, "sexy," if not "revealing."

Monkey said:

I've seen others bash her for "encouraging obesity," which is ridiculous.

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That's sad. My first thought when I saw the Lammily doll was that she looks very pretty. I almost bought her for my daughter (still in toddler stage), but I figure better to wait and see if my daughter even has any interest in fashion dolls. I never did. I got Barbies from friends and relatives for my birthday, but I only wanted to use them to act out stories with.

I get that we want to encourage our kids to be healthy. But it saddens me that Barbie and similar dolls would look healthy to anybody.

Another feature of the Lammily doll I really like is the minimal make-up.

Monkey said:

YLammily's body shape is achievable by human beings, and I'm sure her body shape is sufficient to hold on clothing.

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Considering the available technology, especially with a 3-d printer in the mix, designing and creating viable clothing options for the dolls should be much simpler than when Barbie was introduced.

I hadn't even thought about it until this post, but there are actually some "snap on" dolls (Like paper dolls rendered in 3-D with hard plastic clothes) that have fairly average proportions, and actually look like the child, tween, or teen they're meant to represent. And I know that close to Christmas, several sets of dolls came out that were magnetic. They came in sets of four multi-cultural dolls, with magnetic hair and accessories that could make the templates male or female in appearance. Rather cool, actually, and the cousin-kidlets loved them, despite their being flat.

Barbie is a ho! It was even worse when they decided to improve her by putting her in a variety of extremely challenging careers. Oh great, now the standard is not only impossible physical perfection but being a nuclear physicist, too.

That said, the toymakers' goal is to make money and the marketplace has spoken. People wildly, insanely, inarguably love Barbie and buy Barbie. We are a messed up society.

However (or therefore?), I have to say the new doll doesn't appeal to me. She's white bread whereas Barbie is crack.

Monkey said:

As to Lammily, I've seen a mom blog bash her for not being thick enough to be "realistic," based on the mom's opinion of her own daughters and her own daughters' friends.

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Hahaha, oh wow.

Anyway, hopefully in 50 years, most of the dolls will just be "regular" skinny + in-shape (representative of, say, the 80-90th percentile of fitness for the age group they depict) — instead of Barbie's sort of unrealistic skinny.

Katrina S. Forest said:

That's sad. My first thought when I saw the Lammily doll was that she looks very pretty. I almost bought her for my daughter (still in toddler stage), but I figure better to wait and see if my daughter even has any interest in fashion dolls. I never did. I got Barbies from friends and relatives for my birthday, but I only wanted to use them to act out stories with.

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I've never really gotten the idea that Barbies (or other dolls) are "meant" to be played with only by dressing them up. Acting out stories with them is totally a valid way of playing with them! And it's more in line with how I (and most kids I knew) played with them.

I'm kinda skeptical that many girls see Barbie as a role model. I think toy manufacturers want to sell an ideal or persona a lot of times, but that doesn't mean that's how kids end up seeing or using the toys. If kids only played with toys the way they were marketed, their play would be very limited.

But I love the idea of more realistic dolls. It's something I would have loved having as a kid. Ideally, I think it would be cool to have a wide selection both female and male dolls that are relatively realistic. Though the problems with Barbie's unrealistic figure are more sexist, it's also difficult to find male dolls who aren't built like professional weightlifters or limited to superhero or soldier roles.

DancingMaenid said:

Ideally, I think it would be cool to have a wide selection both female and male dolls that are relatively realistic. .

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Again, with the proliferation, and consistently falling price of, 3-D printers, this will become easier.

A toy company would be able to hold an open casting call, select a line-worth (Say 15-20) diverse body types, scan them into the computer and have prototypes all within the month.

And if the printers ever get a foothold in the personal-use market, you'll see companies licensing patterns that can be downloaded, customized, and printed at home - including programs that allow a child to make doppelganger dolls.

(Complete tangent, but I can see that last one being appealing for crisis intervention. Especially for child advocates and counselors who use dolls as part of their therapy sessions.)

Ah, I just learned about this doll yesterday! I almost bought one, because despite being an adult, I really do like toys (most of them are pretty darn cute), but the fact that the only images in the Kickstarter are 3D renders rather than an actual product turned me off of it rather quickly, aha. Still, I've always wanted to see some shorter, chubbier dolls, because that's my personal aesthetic (really, I don't think Lammily is chubby enough).

I've never known anyone who felt Barbie was a role model growing up. Personally, I never once thought of Barbie as something I should have been looking up to (or even as beautiful a lot of the time). Barbie dolls were always the "bad guys" of my childhood toy collection, actually. I found their unrealistic proportions reminiscent of cartoon villains, rather than an ideal beauty. Not what Mattel had in mind, I'd imagine. My Barbies spent all their free-time enslaving My Little Ponies, trying to capture Beanie Babies to make fur coats, and going to drastic measures to maintain their slim bodies, like crazy pretend surgeries (In retrospect, I may have played a bit too darkly...).

Nonnavlis said:

My Barbies spent all their free-time enslaving My Little Ponies

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What?

Bad Barbies. Bad!

Nonnavlis said:

(In retrospect, I may have played a bit too darkly...).

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Seems about normal. My worst was far worse.