'Average Barbie' No Better Than Actual Barbie

Barbie has been much derided, leading one artist to come up with an idea for an average-sized "anti-Barbie" of sorts, Lammily. The idea has been widely praised, but there's just one problem, writes Virginia Postrel for Bloomberg View: Lammily is "just as fake" as Barbie. The doll has extra pounds, sure, but they're muscle, not fat. "If Lammily were true to life ... she’d have rolls of fat, not a firm plastic tummy. Her figure would turn off both beauty-minded girls and health-conscious parents."

A truly "average" person does not spend the hours in the gym that it would take to achieve the doll's physique, and instead wears her extra pounds less attractively. And then there's the fact that "Lammily also has oversized lips and eyes," proving that this doll really is "the most appealing version of 'average'" that could possibly exist. Branding her as "average" may, in fact, do more harm than Barbie ever could: "Celebrating one version of average as 'normal' and 'realistic' implicitly stigmatizes everyone who doesn’t meet that standard," Postrel writes. "Barbie doesn’t pretend to do that; Lammily does." Click for her full column. (More Barbie stories.)