Ken follows in Barbie's footsteps, gets a more realistic 'dad bod'
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."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Lammily launched a Tilt campaign to raise money for the new boy doll's production. If it hits its goal of raising $70,000 in 30 days, the dolls will likely be up for sale before the end of 2016.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Metaverse: Zuckerberg quits his virtual obsessionFeature The tech mogul’s vision for virtual worlds inhabited by millions of users was clearly a flop
-
Frank Gehry: the architect who made buildings flow like waterFeature The revered building master died at the age of 96
-
Is MAGA melting down?Today's Big Question Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer and more are feuding
-
Son arrested over killing of Rob and Michele ReinerSpeed Read Nick, the 32-year-old son of Hollywood director Rob Reiner, has been booked for the murder of his parents
-
Rob Reiner, wife dead in ‘apparent homicide’speed read The Reiners, found in their Los Angeles home, ‘had injuries consistent with being stabbed’
-
Hungary’s Krasznahorkai wins Nobel for literatureSpeed Read László Krasznahorkai is the author of acclaimed novels like ‘The Melancholy of Resistance’ and ‘Satantango’
-
Primatologist Jane Goodall dies at 91Speed Read She rose to fame following her groundbreaking field research with chimpanzees
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history