Barbie’s Queer Accessories

225 Pages·1995·15.18 MB·English

by  Erica Rand

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.