How real are Barbie & Ken?

Toronto Star headline: Life-size Barbie’s Shocking Dimensions: Would She Be Anorexic?

Women’s Health article: You Won't Believe What This Woman Says She Does to Look Like a Barbie

Ukrainian model Valeria Lukyanova became crazy-famous in 2012 for undergoing insane amounts of plastic surgery to look like a live version of a Barbie doll. But now, the model claims she has a new strategy for maintaining her shape: She recently told the International Business Times that she practices a diet called Breatharianism. How it works: Rather than eating and drinking food and water (like a human), you "live off of" air and light, otherwise thought to be "cosmo micro-food" absorbed from the environment.

Women’s Health: What Would Barbie Look Like with Real-Woman Proportions? This "average" Barbie is anything but

Which one is “normal”?

We can answer this with z-scores. Remember …

Several researchers have come up with different measurements Barbie would have if she were a full-sized woman. Here is numbers from the University of Northern Iowa Department of Mathematics:

Convert Barbie’s chest, waist, and hips to z-scores.

If women’s measurements were normally distributed, would you expect many women to have a 16-inch waist?

The Ken doll is also not shaped like a normal adult man The Ken doll is also not shaped like a normal adult man. The z-scores for Ken’s chest, waist, and hips are -3.4, -2.5, and -3.2 respectively.

Find the measurements of a full-size Ken.