Artist Removes Barbie’s Makeup to Challenge Doll Manufacturers

Artist Nickolay Lamm, whose work we’ve previously featured at GOOD, has a big question for doll manufacturers, “If dolls look good without makeup, what’s the point of putting makeup on them in the first place?” To prove his point, Lamm fired up his digital face-cleaning towlette (Photoshop) and got to work removing the heavy eye makeup, lipstick, and novelty-sized eye lashes on Disney Princess, Barbie, and Bratz dolls.

The results? They still look attractive au naturel without all of the hyper-sexualized face paint. Although, even without makeup, they still present images with highly-unrealistic lips, doe eyes and ski-slope noses. Lamm believes that removing the makeup is a first step in presenting realistic body imagery to young girls. “Dolls heavily influence the way that young girls want to look,” he explained. “And so, in my opinion, less is more.”

Another great result from this project? It inspired the realistic, minimal makeup-wearing Lammily Dolls.