Lammily

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Lammily is an art or marketing project by the artist Nickolay Lamm from 2013. It is produced as an alternative to the well-known Barbie doll by Mattel , which is based on this doll in design, but Lamm does not orientate himself on this doll in criticized ideals of beauty, but in the average physical dimensions of a 19-year-old American woman. The project received a strong response both in the new media and in the international press. Positive appreciations were based on debates about social role models and ideals of beauty.

Art project

Lammily was developed in 2013 as an art project that Nickolay Lamm designed in a critical examination of the unrealistic ideal of beauty of Barbie. At first, Lamm had only given the Barbie doll more realistic proportions using image processing on the computer. A three-dimensional prototype produced later was based on official data from the American health authority Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was produced with the help of a 3D printer . In addition to the realistic body and face dimensions, the doll is less heavily made up, has a navel and wider, flatter feet so that it can stand without high-heeled, tight shoes.

In the project, Nickolay Lamm refers to his own experiences with poor self-esteem and uncertainty about his appearance during puberty. In particular, he also reacts to the criticism of unrealistic standards of beauty that are generally conveyed in public and in particular by fashion dolls. Barbie in particular was often blamed for “slimness madness” through to anorexia and bulimia . Empirical studies have shown that the dimensions of toy dolls actually have an impact on children's ideal of beauty. In one experiment, one group of girls played with Barbies, another with a more realistic doll. Afterwards, the Barbie group wanted an extremely slim body more often than the children who were confronted with the more realistic doll. The head of the study, Helga Dittmar from the University of Sussex , wrote in the APA journal Developmental Psychology : “Such ultra-thin figures weaken the self-esteem of girls and make them less satisfied with their own bodies and want to get thinner ".

In the press, Lamm's criticism is placed in the context of the political and scientific discussion about body images and gender roles. Lamm's project is compared with a campaign against Barbie by the women's rights organization Pinkstinks Germany , as well as with Unilever's self-critical advertising campaign for its “Dove” brand or with other art projects that point out the possibilities in advertising images Using the image processing software Photoshop to adapt the appearance of models to culturally shaped, but often unrealistic standards of beauty. While these projects deal with the distorted body image of fashion photography , Lamm wants to make the difference between the proportions of typical fashion dolls and real human bodies visible. Nickolay Lamm, who emigrated from Saint Petersburg to the USA with his mother and brothers at the age of six , is also building on his own art projects that typically deal with the digital visualization of social problems such as strong differences in income distribution or global warming .

Series production and marketing

The strong response to the comparison pictures between Barbie and the Lammily doll shown on the Internet suggested series production. Lamm, who studied marketing at the University of Pittsburgh , said he was supported by Roger Rambeau, who had previously worked at Mattel, in planning the manufacturing process, the procurement strategy and the selection of suppliers . Also the design of the doll was u. a. Adapted with the help of other family members of Lamm, Lammily now has dark hair instead of previously, like Barbie, blonde hair, and she has joints on the limbs, so that she gives the impression of an active and sporty body. In the Exclusive First Edition she wears a blouse, shorts and white sneakers.

The production was made possible financially with the help of crowdfunding and viral marketing via YouTube videos that show the reaction of second graders to the doll. It should be available from the end of November 2014 as an alternative to Barbie. In order to increase the realistic look of the doll, stickers with acne pimples, cellulite or stretch marks can be ordered as accessories. The central slogan is "mediocrity is beautiful" ( average is beautiful ). One of Lamm's stated goals is for the doll to help “focus more on what people are doing than what they look like”.

Crowdfunding raised US $ 95,000 on the first day and $ 500,000 after a month. The investors, many of them Canadians, are entitled to the dolls produced first, of which 19,000 were ordered by mid-November 2014. Another 25,000 should be available before Christmas 2014 at a price of around 20 euros and have been available from the online shop since November 28th.

Lamm would like to expand production to include more dolls. With his first doll, he didn't specifically care about demographics or ethnicity, just more realistic body measurements. On his website he announces a greater consideration of physical and ethnic plurality and male dolls.

Media response

The doll has been reported and discussed continuously in many media around the world. One of his videos about morphing from Barbie to Lammily was viewed by nearly 500,000 YouTube users within 24 hours , according to a report by the marketing magazine Werben & Sell . The press reactions were mostly positive. However, commentator Lionel Shriver for the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian said that children would see through the message that beauty is nothing out of the ordinary as dishonest. The concept is ultimately just "well-intentioned ramblings". Arno Orzessek commented for Deutschlandfunk that the ideas of beauty and emancipation were changing, and that Barbie used to be an expression of emancipation from “the conservative hearth and house image of women in her birth years”. He also doubted that the average American population could serve as an educational model for a healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, the journalist Victoria Richards pointed out in The Independent that Lammily could be seen as an important step in the fight against the ubiquitous pressure to achieve an unrealistic ideal of female beauty.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Alternative Barbie "Lammily": A doll with acne and cellulite . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ See also competition for Barbie: Lammily, the average doll . On: Exmodels.de , a cross-media project about beauty concepts and images of old age, March 31, 2014.
  3. ↑ Helga Dittmar, Emma Holliwell, Suzanne Ive: Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin? The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year-Old Girls , Development Psychology, 2006, Vol. 41 No. 2, pp. 283-292, pdf
  4. ↑ Helga Dittmar (2009). How Do “Body Perfect” Ideals in the Media Have a Negative Impact on Body Image and Behaviors? Factors and Processes Related to Self and Identity . Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology: Vol. 28, Special Issue: Body Image and Eating Disorders, pp. 1-8. doi: 10.1521 / jscp.2009.28.1.1 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Susanne Herrmann: Lammily doll: So beautiful is quite normal . In: W&V , November 21, 2014.
  6. ↑ See Christine Dankbar: Against Barbie and the Bahn AG . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 15, 2013.
  7. ↑ With further references: Nickolay Lamm: About me . From: Nickolaylamm.com , accessed November 26, 2014.
  8. ↑ z. B. Jenny Xie: Visualization of the Day: New York City's Wealth Gap, Mapped In 3D . In: Citylab , August 16, 2013.
  9. ^ Lammily - Average is Beautiful . Video on Nickolay Lamm's YouTube channel, accessed November 26, 2014.
  10. ↑ a b Linda Barnard: Move over, Barbie. Realistic doll Lammily is on her way . In: The Toronto Star , November 19, 2014.
  11. ↑ Laura Stampler: The New 'Normal Barbie' Comes With an Average Woman's Proportions - and Cellulite-Sticker Accessories . In: Time , November 19, 2014.
  12. ↑ Bianca Waldera: Lammily: This is how children react to the normal Barbie . In: The Huffington Post (DE), November 26, 2014
  13. ↑ Amanda Borschel-Dan: Artist's 'normal' Barbie doll is modestly dressed, and can have cellulite too. In: The Times of Israel, November 27, 2014 .
  14. ↑ https://lammily.com/future-lammily/
  15. ↑ In addition to FAZ, Time magazine and The Guardian z. B. in Stern , Welt , Brigitte , Bravo , Mädchen , ARTE ; Deutschlandfunk CNN , Independent , Daily Telegraph ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Huffington Post , USA Today , Times of Israel Le Point , Liberation , Il Repubblica , Gazeta Wyborcza , Washington Post ; The Times of Israel ; The Vancouver Sun , The Huffington Post Canada , etc. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / fashion.telegraph.co.uk
  16. ↑ Lionel Shriver: Sorry Lammily, your dumpy looks won't fool many little girls . In: The Guardian , November 21, 2014.
  17. ↑ Arno Orzessek: Anti-Barbie doll. Just average. In: Kultur heute, Deutschlandfunk, November 24, 2014.
  18. ↑ Victoria Richards: Lammily the 'Normal Barbie' is a great start, but no gendered toy is without problems . In: The Independent , November 21, 2014.