The world's most famous doll, Mattel's Barbie doll, has long been the subject of much criticism from feminists and women's groups who say her unrealistic proportions and body shape promote an unhealthy ideal of what a woman's body should look like.
So what would Barbie look like as a 19-year old woman with average proportions? Artist Nickolay Lamm set out to discover the answer to this question. He re-created a 3D model of a doll and photographed it alongside a standard Barbie, and then photoshopped the model to look just like her Barbie cousin. Lamm said that, scaled up to human size, Barbie dolls would have unrealistic measurements of 36-18-33, in comparison to the typical 19-year-old girl's measurements of 32-31-33, according to the Daily Mail.
The average woman has a 38 inch back, 34 inch waist and hips that measure 40 inches around, and according to Lamm's model, the "average" Barbie surprisingly looks pretty good in comparison to her super-svelte cousin.
If Barbie were to exist in real life, it has been estimated that she would weigh around 110 pounds with a BMI of 16.24, fitting the criteria for anorexia.
"My last Barbie project got a lot of criticism because Barbie is just a toy," Lamm said in an email to the Huffington Post.
"People argue that a toy can't do any harm. However, if we criticize skinny models, we should at least be open to the possibility that Barbie may negatively influence young girls as well. Furthermore, a realistically proportioned Barbie actually looks pretty good in the pictures I produced. So, if there's even a small chance of Barbie in its present form negatively influencing girls, and if Barbie looks good as an average sized woman in America. What's stopping Mattel from making one?"
Lamm is a 24-year old artist from Pittsburgh,a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 from the College of Business Administration.
"I always loved to draw and almost went to an art school instead of university," he said in his email. "I combine art and research together to create compelling illustrations.Each blog post I make takes around 1-4 weeks to create. I feel very fortunate to make a living doing what I love to do."
Click here to see photos of Nickolay Lamm's realistic-looking Barbie doll and 3D renderings he used on his latest art project.
