Nina In New York: Lammily Finds Average-Looking Love
Remember Lammily, our friend the "normal" Barbie doll? Well, Lammily is doing great. She's a lovely, popular, well-adjusted teenaged girl who loves her body and is really in touch with the gifts of monthly menstruation.
Well, she's growing up. And like many girls who reach a certain age and level of maturity and self-acceptance, Lammily has a booooyyyyyfriennnnd. Ooooooh! He's only a digital prototype, so he doesn't have a name yet. We'll call him TK for now. But more to the point, they're totally totally perfect for each other. Squee! Just like Lammily, his proportions are based on the average 19-year-old male's. Just like Lammily, he's pret-ty adorbs in a really accessible, recognizable way. Does he have the chiseled abs and rugged perfection of a classic Ken doll? No. But he's got a sort of young Nicolas Cage thing going on, like from that phase in the '90s when you had to grapple with the undeniable and distressing fact that you found Nick Cage a little bit attractive and didn't know why. His chest sags a little, his tummy protrudes ever so slightly, and he does wear jorts, but he's got a good hairline and an honest face and the fully articulated, sturdy limbs of a trustworthy action figure/man. Let the shallow, looks-obsessed, anatomically improbably Kens and Barbies of the world find one another and struggle to maintain a lifetime of conversation. Lammily and TK were made for each other.
Not quite literally, exactly. The dolls' creator, Nikolay Lamm, didn't create the new normal Ken just to provide Lammily with someone to take to the 8th grade dance. He did it for the boys. They, too, suffer from societal pressures and feel anxiety about standards of attractiveness and masculinity.
So all TK needs is you to help crowdfund his newly established vital existence. People who contribute can vote on his name and occupation, and get in on the ground floor with a first run doll. And no, he doesn't have go be Lammily's boyfee. But if he comes home to my house, you'd better believe they're gonna hold hands and go on awkward group dates and kiss when they're dared by their weirdo friends. TK and Lammily sitting in a tree! TK-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love based on each party's inner worth, then comes a modern marriage plagued with the typical problems but firmly rooted in equality and mutual respect, then comes the average-looking baby in the baby carriage!
I've got butterflies.
