Barbie’s Queer Accessories PDF
Preview Barbie’s Queer Accessories
Edited by Michele Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, Michael Moon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Erica Rand Duke University Press Durham and London 1995 © 1995 Duke University Press All rights reserved FIfth printing, 2007 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Typeset in Century Oldstyle by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. "Homocide" and "Soft Targets" from Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill, copyright (©) 1992 by Essex Hemphill. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Barbie is a registered trademark of the Mattei Corporation, and Barbie images and material are protected under copyrights of the Mattei Corporation. The references to Barbie material and the use of Barbie images in this book are made under the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law, which protect the reproduction of a work "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research." This book is not authorized by the Mattei Corporation. Acknowledgments vii 9nilwdueti.o.n On Our Backs, in Our Attics, on Our Minds 1 ~O.ne Making Barbie 23 ~:J.w.o. Older Heads on Younger Bodies 93 ~:J~ Barbie's Queer Adult Accessories 149 ~ On Our Backs, in Our Hands, on Our Broadsides 193 Notes 197 Index 209 In 1992, when Kelly McCullough asked for a summer research job, I had no idea what an undergraduate assistant could do that would take a whole summer. My imagination turned out to be as limited as her contribution, which began with getting the job funded, was stupendous. I assigned her little beyond the drudge work of bibliographic retrieval. She did much more: she figured out things I needed, like annual reports, before I did; decoded MatteI's phone system to get beyond low level triage; coaxed out much more material than Mattei ordinarily dispenses; tracked down and interviewed interesting people, including a person she read about in passing whom Mattei hired to play Barbie in shopping-mall fashion shows. Everyone she contacted, it seems, was willing to speak to her for hours and often volunteered to send helpful material, like 120 newspaper articles on Barbie's thirtieth birthday. During the next summer, Kelly con ducted great consumer interviews. Virtually every section in this book owes much to her creative research and remarkable talent as an interviewer. I thank, too, Elise Greven, who did a lot of early groundwork at a time when Bates College still thought that primary compensation for student assistants should be the "honor" of working for a faculty member. To many others, too, lowe gratitude. My Barbie writing began with an essay for Laura Doan's The Lesbian Postmodern (1994, Columbia University Press); Laura accepted my project despite her initial invitation to write about viii Barbie's Queer Accessories something else and gave helpful comments at this early stage. Ken Wissoker suggested that I write the book and has been a dream editor throughout. It is often said that it took a doll named Ken for Barbie to really get a life. While this is hardly true about Barbie, not the least because Midge came later, it is certainly true of Barbie's Queer Accessories. Georgia Nigro shared her ex pertise in child psychology. Charles Nero and William Pope.L, two incredible culture guys to have down the block and down the stairs, let me accost them repeatedly when I needed someone to work through my thoughts with. While they are cited only a few times, their insights are everywhere influential. So, too, are those of Bee Bell, whose fierce activist and critical talents, among many others, have abetted my survival and pleasure, and those of Annette Dragon, whose photographic assistance represents only one of the top skills that have taken me through many pains and many delights. I presented material in progress at Wayne State University, the Penn sylvania State University, the University of Missouri, and the University of Southern Maine, and in a panel sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the College Art Association. Comments on each occasion were invaluable, as were close readings of the manuscript by Lynn Spigel, Michele Barale, and Michael Moon. Countless people shared Barbie clippings, videos, cre ations, objects, and stories. I am grateful to the adults who were willing to share their sometimes difficult memories and to the girls, especially Hannah and Kathryn, who led me candidly into their own current, complicated, and compellingly theorized imaginative worlds. I was helped at Bates College by a Roger C. Schmutz faculty research grant, by a one-semester pretenure leave, and by many people: Rebecca Corrie, Don Lent, Bill Matthews, Jim Parakilas, and Martha Crunkleton, who got me out of trouble repeatedly, or, more precisely, helped me remain simultaneously in trouble and employed; everyone who fed my research via interdepartment mail, especially Dennis Graffiin, Anne Williams, Bob Bran ham, and Marcy Plavin; Sheila Sylvester, Ann Darby, Joyce Caron, Sylvia Deschaine, Sylvia Hawks, and Sandra Groleau, who make it possible for me to retain time and energy to write; inspired and inspiring students; the Gay Lesbian-Bisexual Alliance; Paula Matthews, Paul Heroux, Ned Harwood, Christina Brinkley, and Robert Feintuch; and Paqui Lopez, Avi Chomski, and Kirk Read (if Barbie ever goes tenure track, Barbie's Dream Cohort ought to look a lot like mine). I thank also my aerobics classmates and teachers at the Auburn, Maine, YMCA, the one place where no one ever treats me like a scandal and where, consequently, I found unexpected haven. Ana R. Kissed, Rose Marasco, Elspeth Brown, Ray Gagnon, Kevin Gagnon, and the Acknowledgments ix people in ACT up/Portland are great allies with whom I have been privileged to hook up since moving to Lewiston. People who think that good politics happen only in big cities need to learn otherwise. And all should have met Don Plourde. An inspiring advocate for educational access, queer rights, and universal health care, he could speak the politics of social justice in a lan guage accessible to virtually everyone who heard him, which he compelled many people to do. I miss him. These people represent only some of many who, directly or indirectly, have, over many years, contributed to my thinking about the stuff of Barbie consumption-sex and passion, friends and lovers, power and politics, past and present, people and objects. I thank also Beth Heisinger, Kelly Hen sen, Susan Hill, Joanne Kalogeras, Jonathan Katz, David Keer, Lise Kilde gaard, Sura Levine, Sallie McCorkle, Nadine McGann, Susan Miller, Andrew Parker, Mary Patten, Linda Seidel, Mary Sheriff, and Maxine Wolfe. lowe much as well to my family: my siblings, Spencer Rand and Cynthia Barabas, who let me tell our stories; my late grandfathers, Bill Chananie and Irving Rand; my grandmothers, Sophie Chananie, Adele Rand, and lola Graton; my stepfather, Waldo Graton, and everyone he brought with him-since my own Barbie story concerns family grief over the death of my biological father, Jack Rand, I want also to record here the subsequent pleasure of expanding the family portrait. I learned at home to be "out and proud" as a Jew and to take risks for social justice with attention to my own survival. While a book with queer in the title is not the outcome for which many in my family had hoped to take credit, they all stand by me anyway. Finally, this book is dedicated to my mother, Marilyn Graton, who taught me when I was nine that every his torical narrative is invested with the politics of the teller. All my work since has been based on this principle and emboldened by her love and support. Barbie's life, rumor has it, has been greatly enhanced by having no visible parentage. I doubt it.
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