Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells, Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter domestic use by following plastics on their journey into women’s bodies. Held explores the effects of military-industrial science and the emergence of nylon, silicone, and plastic foams on embodied and expressive configurations of gender, sexuality, and race. She focuses on the United States between the late 1930s with the launch of nylon—whose potential was widely celebrated as the world’s first fully synthetic fiber and the ideal replacement for silk stockings—and the late 1970s, when policies began addressing the dangerous health consequences of implantable plastics. Held untangles the complex relationships between chemical companies, the US military, the Federal Drug Administration, plastic surgeons, advertising agencies, the Hollywood star system, go-go dancers, drag queens, and fashion and industrial designers. Using feminist, queer, and trans lenses, she shows that there was never just one bombshell identity. In so doing, Held complicates typical understandings of the shaping and reshaping of gender.
- Cover
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Nylon / Thread
- 1. Spinning Nylon: An Explosive History from Labs to Legs
- 2. Nylon and the Test Tube Girl: Racialized Gender Norms and Plastic Futures
- Foam / Padding
- 3. Soft Power: Plastic Foams, Design, and Postwar Bodies
- 4. Outward, Upward, and Inward: Implanting Foam Foundationwear in the Postwar United States
- 5. Bombshells, Bombers, and Bumpers: Plastic Foam Sourcing and Women’s Bodies
- Silicone / Fluid
- 6. Silicones on the Surface: Military-Industrial r & d, Postwar Conversion, and the Body
- 7. Silicones Beneath the Surface: Fluid Othering and Japan
- 8. Queering Silicones: Carol Doda and the Cogs of the fda
- Epilogue: Queering Plastic Futures
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
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