Dolls look better without makeup; now if only we could buy them that way

What does a doll look like before she gets all, well, dolled up? Sickly, according to an image circulated around the Internet earlier in April. But artist Nickolay Lamm did his own investigation and found dolls without makeup are actually rather pretty.

|
Courtesy of Nickolay Lamm/MyVoucherCodes.co.uk
Nickolay Lamm decided to see if dolls without makeup really looked as awful as a viral image created earlier in April would have you believe. Turns out, dolls, like their human counterparts, are beautiful without the stuff.

There's an image powdered across the Internet of a Barbie head without makeup. Below her eyes are swollen, fleshy bags. Her cheeks bloat outward. Her lips looks flat. It looks ugly. And when Pittsburgh-based artist Nickolay Lamm saw the photoshopped image, he thought it looked exaggerated as well.

"There's no way that Barbie looks that bad without makeup," Mr. Lamm says.

So he went to a nearby Target with a mission and an alibi. He was going to buy some Barbie dolls and conduct a "mini-investigation," published originally by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, to see what they really looked like au naturel. If any Target employee, suspicious of lone 24-year-old man browsing the doll section, asked why he bought four Barbie dolls, he'd blame his sister (who doesn't exist).

Back home, he photographed the dolls — two Barbies, one Princess Disney, one Bratz — and then had a friend photoshop away the heavy eye-liner, spider-leg long eyelashes, and rich lipstick. And can you believe it? The dolls look healthy and beautiful without all that pigment fuss. 

This actually worried Lamm at first because he figured the media wouldn't appreciate images of makeup-less dolls that didn't look malnourished, but he was wrong. 

Babble.com writer Maegan Tintari admired the "prettier, softer, and more approachable" dolls while criticizing the industry that decided to give them "brightly layered eyeshadows, impossibly long eyelashes, and bold lips."

"And if these dolls are marketed towards children, mostly to little girls of an age before they can really conceptualize things like makeup and trying to make ourselves look prettier than we are with said makeup, then why do the already pretty faced dolls need the makeup at all?"

iVillage writer Jenna McCarthy said: "They all look perfectly fine – often better – in the unpainted state. The question of course becomes: Would kids still want to play with them? My guess is yes. But it's up to Mattel and the other makers to give girls that option."

Will Mattel consider letting the dolls' natural beauty shine? Calls and e-mails to the company this morning went unanswered. Lamm says they haven't contacted him since his photos went viral a couple weeks ago. But, if they did, he knows what he'd tell them. 

"In real life, I don't really care if she has makeup or doesn't, but makeup is so commonplace," he says. "I remember in middle school when nobody had makeup, at least not everybody. I miss the naturalness."

"Yeah, we should start making dolls without makeup," Lamm said. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Dolls look better without makeup; now if only we could buy them that way
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/0503/Dolls-look-better-without-makeup-now-if-only-we-could-buy-them-that-way
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe