Beauty Made Plastic: Constructions of a Western Feminine Ideal
Beauty Made Plastic: Constructions of a Western Feminine Ideal

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the visual trope of a plastic and Barbie doll-like standard of beauty in contemporary representations of feminine embodiment and subjectivity. Considering its technological, historical, linguistic, and aesthetic origins, this article traces how a cultural narrative of woman-as-doll has set the stage for such contemporary manifestations, and how plastic has slipped into the discourse. It grapples with the traditional implications of the phenomenon of woman-as-doll on feminine subjectivity in the West, and suggests the potentialities and limitations that a visually plastic and Barbie doll-like corporeality might have for the feminine subject in posthuman terms.

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