Published in 1994
336 pages
M. G. Lord is a cultural critic and investigative journalist. She is the author of the widely praised books Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science, a family memoir about Cold War aerospace culture, and Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll. Her latest book, is The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice. With Shannon Halwes, she is co-writing the libretto for composer Laura Karpman’s One-Ten, an opera commissioned by the L. A. Opera about the 110 Freeway on its 70th anniversary. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and that paper’s Arts & Leisure section, and her work has also appeared in such publications as Travel + Leisure, Discover, Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. A graduate of Yale, Lord was for twelve years a syndicated political cartoonist and columnist based at Newsday. She teaches in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC.
What is this book about?
Since Barbie’s introduction in 1959, her impact on baby boomers has been revolutionary. Far from being a toy designed by men to enslave women, she was a toy invented by women to teach women what– for better or worse– was expected of them. In telling Barbie’s fascinating story, cultural critic and investigative journalist M. G. Lord, herself a first-generation Barbie owner, has written a provocative, zany, occasionally shocking book that will change how you look at the doll and the world.
