Ken follows in Barbie's footsteps, gets a more realistic 'dad bod'

(Image credit: Credit: Lammily)

published 9 March 2016

Barbie isn't the only doll waving goodbye to unrealistic body standards. Shortly after Mattel announced three new Barbie body shapes — tall, petite, and curvy — in January, the startup Lammily made over Ken, replacing his six-pack abs with a more aggressively average "dad bod" in an effort to combat male body image issues.

As it turns out, Ken's body is just as unrealistic as Barbie's. Co.Exist reports that for the average man to look like Ken, he would have to be 20 inches taller, have an extra 11 inches of chest circumference, and boast bigger biceps than "almost every professional bodybuilder in history." The new Ken doll has a body based off of the average 19-year-old man.

"I feel male body image is the kind of thing that men don't talk about," Nickolay Lamm, founder of Lammily, said. "Women experience beauty standards on a super-high level, which men will never get to experience. But at the same time, I feel there's pressures on men in terms of how tall you are, how much hair you have, how much muscle you have... As men, you're not supposed to care about your image as much, but that doesn't mean those pressures aren't there."