Laura Yuen @LAURA_YUEN
Someone should check in on the TravisMathew mannequin at the Mall of America. Is he OK?
I recently spotted him — let's call him Steve — in the storefront of the high-end performance apparel store. His midsection was bloated, but not in a run-of-the-mill dad bod sort of way. It appeared as though Steve had either shoved a watermelon up his T-shirt, was suffering from an unknown liver condition or was with child.
"It caught me off guard," agreed Tyler Igou of Apple Valley, who was with his wife pushing their 1-year-old in a stroller at the mall.
If the intent was to create a more plausible likeness of the average American male body, Igou suggested the mannequin manufacturer could have distributed Steve's weight more evenly and given him a huskier build. "Maybe they tried, and it fell flat," he offered.
But that might be a generous assumption. To me, this attempt didn't seem in the vein of the body positivity trend that has led to curvy (and usually female) mannequins and models I've seen at retailers like Target and Athleta.
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