Barbie's Queer Accessories (Series Q)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 224 pages
• Published by: Duke University Press December 1995
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 082231620X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0822316206
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 12 ounces

From Library Journal
Have you ever dressed Barbie in Ken's clothes or let her sleep with Skipper? If so, consider yourself an accessory to the crime of liberating Barbie from her conformist, straight world. Describing herself as a dyke cultural critic and political activist, university teacher Rand looks at how consumer interactions with Barbie affect and reflect their political, social, and gender identities. She contrasts owners' recollections of what they thought about and did to their Barbies with the conventional characteristics and socially approved uses promoted by the doll's corporate manufacturer, Mattel. Speaking from an alternative viewpoint, Rand shows how adult reinterpretations and subversions of white, blond, straight Barbie (for additional examples see Lucinda Ebersole and Pichard Peabody's Mondo Barbie, St. Martin's Pr., 1993) become forms of resistance to disempowering and discriminatory cultural messages. Recommended for academic libraries and scholars of popular cultural and gay or women's studies.?Carol A. McAllister, Swem Lib., Coll. of William and Mary. Williamsburg, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Review
“[This] book persistently challenges the notion that interpretations can be straightforwardly read-off from cultural activities. . . . Rand . . . explains the multifarious uses and meanings of Barbie dolls in extraordinary detail. . . . This is a book that would usefully raise the temperature in any room where culture is on the agenda.”
--Max Farrar, The Times Higher Education Supplement

“Rand’s book opens up a whole new, wickedly funny way to play Barbie.”
--Etalka Lehoczky, The Boston Phoenix

“Barbie’s Queer Accessories is . . . the definitive scholarly work on the blonde babe ruler of the toy empire. . . . This is a smart, often funny, and necessary book about the Kore-figure of middle-class girldom. Most valuably, it opens up the discussion of how we make gender in the marketplace.”
--Diane Roberts, Journal of American Studies

“Rand’s [book] stands out as an very thoughtful and engaging analysis of America’s favorite plastic sweetheart.”
--Lynn Spigel, Contemporary Sociology