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Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender (review)

2007; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 120; Issue: 475 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jaf.2007.0029

1535-1882

Cathy Lynn Preston,

Media, Gender, and Advertising

Reviewed by: Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender Cathy Lynn Preston Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender. By Jeannie Banks Thomas. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Pp. x + 216, notes, bibliography, index, illustrations.) In Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, & Other Forms of Visible Gender, Jeannie Banks Thomas explores the intersections of mass and folk cultural production, gender, and material culture. Concentrating on specific sculptural forms (cemetery statues, yard figures, and other items used in assemblages, and children's dolls and action figures), Thomas examines how people use such forms in their everyday lives to reflect their own experiences with and understandings of gender and other social categories. In reference to mass-produced sculptural forms, Thomas notes: "The title of this book refers specifically to Barbie . . . and G.I. Joe. The title also works, however, as a metaphor for two cultural and historical patterns that all three of the studies reveal. First, the bodies of culturally visible female figures are often emphasized or sexualized through nudity or partial nudity, and, second, the depictions of male bodies are [End Page 104] not only clothed but also armored in the trappings of action and aggression" (p. 3). The extent to which folklore perpetuates patterns—associating "women with the body beautiful" and men "with the body violent" (p. 190)—or opens "the door to creative, subversive, and idiosyncratic reconstructions of the forms" and their historical patterns (p. 188) becomes the ethnographic focus of the study. Ultimately, Thomas convincingly argues that generally the male sculptural forms are less open than the female forms are to folk critique. Thomas develops her argument through four chapters, each of which foregrounds different sculptural forms and the folk performances prompted by those forms. Each chapter begins with the author's situating of her own personal experience with a specific sculptural form and then addresses that form or set of forms in relation to gendered patterns that are revealed through them. Next, as Thomas explains, "the objects are placed in a larger historical context [frequently highlighting the nineteenth century], and the antecedents of the gendered image and the cultural attitudes it reflects are considered. Finally, each chapter concludes with an analysis of the form in relation to the folklore and folk customs it prompts" (p. 3). Chapter 1, "Cemetery Statues: Vengeful Virgins, Naked Mourners, and Dead White Guys," discusses folk legend. Chapter 2, "Yard Art: Geese in Bikinis, Garden Gnomes, and Peeing Boys," analyzes the folk arts of assemblage and bricolage and folk customs such as pranking. Chapter 3, "Barbie and Her Consorts: Baked Barbie, Forgotten Ken, and Flushed G.I. Joe," and chapter 4, "Bodies Beautiful and Violent: Virgins, Barbies, and Joes," focus on children's play (how children actually use specific mass-produced dolls and action figures in their play activities), adult personal narratives concerning childhood play, and such forms of adult play as e-mail-lore parodies (for example, "Post-Menopausal Barbie"). One of the many strengths of Thomas's work is that it provides a "venue for the voices of those who create, use, or re-create the forms" that the author discusses (p. 7). Focusing on those voices has enabled Thomas to hear what might otherwise not be evident. For example, in chapter 1, Thomas explains that while the legends associated with female gendered statues "contain, and therefore carry into the present, some very old story lines and conservative ways of seeing women that tie them to traditional female roles and the domestic realm," the legends also differ from the "nineteenth-century [statuary] forms that prompted them" by giving to the female form an individualized life story (p. 47). Similarly, in chapter 2, Thomas opts out of an analysis of the formal "principles of design and aesthetic execution" normally discussed in relation to "art." Instead, she astutely refocuses on art "as a problem-solving or issue-addressing behavior that emphasizes the aesthetic in its execution" (pp. 109–10), thereby drawing attention to the ways in which yard art functions in the lives of its creators and the larger life of the community. And in chapters 3 and 4, children's explanations of their play and...