Since I don’t want to be a physical girl I’d settle for being an intangible idea. A symbol of a girl. The thought that my physical form simply represents a girl, a girl that signifies some greater principle or dogma, is attractive and cathartic. A girl so singular yet all-encompassing, free from the burden of constructing a complex identity. To be treated as a religious or political symbol, rooted in the Earth and its history, would mean to be treated with the dignity and respect of a perfect representation. Whenever I pass by a mirror I think of my dog, and I don’t look myself in the eyes. I pretend I’m a universal girl, on the cover of a newspaper or a missing person’s poster. I pretend I’m a vessel for communicating the decay of society, or a new mascara brand. Only looked at for what I symbolize. 

I was reading The Name of the Rose, and found a passage that stuck out to me concerning singularity and universal ideas. Eco writes: “I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individual horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given to me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a universal idea.” I stopped to picture myself as a horse, as Adso of Melk, as a girl. My skin clasped around my bones tightly. I was caught up in the dissonance between universal symbols and individual meanings. 

I remember my trip to Istanbul, when I stepped into a mosque that was not a mosque at all, but a coalescence of holy worship. Half mosque, half church, remnants of conquest were vivid and visceral on the walls of the Hagia Sophia. Its religious purpose had always been dictated by whoever ruled over Constantinople, and to the current Turkish government it was undoubtedly a mosque. Christian and Islamic paintings blurred into each other, ending abruptly in destroyed ruins. They were erased and painted over by hand; the symbol transformed at the whim of men. On metro walls in Vienna, I saw how swastikas became grids for tic-tac-toe, passerby filling in the X’s and O’s as the symbol slowly deteriorated in form and meaning. Originally, the swastika was a cultural and religious symbol implying fortune and well-being. I somehow felt its development was buried deep within the metro walls, until it finally succumbed under a graffiti artist’s hand. 

In the dawn of Yugoslavia, my great-grandfather embraced the atheist label. An aspiring academic, he had studied theology in Sarajevo as a young man. To him, religious scripture was merely a text to be critically studied. His wife, on the other-hand, adorned the hijab; a label of staunch resistance to his intellectualism. Obviously, he could not be an intellectual with a covered wife, as these two universal ideas had no point of intersection. When friends visited their home or they attended public events, they reached a compromise: my great-grandmother would wear a wig, so that he could maintain his reputation and she could maintain her faith. Their identities meant virtually nothing in relation to each other only a few years prior. The symbols seemed stronger than the very individuals that created them. Engulfing them in false universality, strict and unforgiving. 

I believed symbols are so entrenched in history and connotation that I forgot they are so malleable. I watched them break, bend, and stretch, yet still had faith in their durability. “A cowboy rides into town on Friday, stays in town for 3 days, then leaves on Friday. How did he do it?,” my grandfather asked me when I was a child. He still loves to ask me riddles, and always the most ridiculous kind. The horse’s name was Friday. I know that now. Back then, I wouldn’t have fathomed that response. It’s instinctive to always assume the name ‘Friday’ denotes the fifth day of a week, a symbol of time passed. The riddle shows how hesitant we are to accept the fallible nature of symbols, that Friday is the fifth day of a week but it can also be the name of a horse. There is nothing essential about the name ‘Friday’ to the passing of time; ‘Friday’ can be changed by governments and drawn over with spray paint. Much like Eco’s horse, the horse in my grandfather’s riddle is far from a representation of a universal idea. It’s only our ignorance that gives it such a form. 

Perhaps becoming a symbol would not be very different to what I am already. Perhaps the vulnerable flesh of a living, breathing girl is not very different to the vulnerability of an obsolete symbol. Both require theatrical fabrication, and elaborate myths about their supposed power. I look in the mirror once more, smiling. I am not a universal girl. The horse’s name was Friday.

The post The Horse’s Name Was Friday appeared first on The New Absurdist.

September is the start of New York Fashion Week, making it a prime time for brands like Dove to launch their new advertisement campaigns. With these subway ads, a quippy hashtag, and the help of Dove pop-up stands – or “pit stops”— giving away free merch and MTA cards, it makes sense that the ad campaign has gotten lots of praise online in the last few days in the press.

If Dove’s ad campaign was the final drop in the bucket of confidence you needed to bare your armpits with pride, that’s great! But it’s important to understand that Dove cares more about your wallet than your pits. Dove is not aspiring to create a social movement that makes women feel confident unless they are spearheading the ‘movement’ with their own merchandise. 

The first red flag is that for a campaign that claims to be about not judging armpits, especially unshaved ones, there’s not a single bushy armpit in the bunch. At most, there’s a slight hint of stubble.

Ad images of Dove’s #Freethepit campaign sourced from Ogilvy

It’s no coincidence that Dove has chosen NYC and Times Square to debut #freethepits when this is a central location to #freethenipple protests. And with women’s freedom to go topless, or even braless still being a controversial social issue, it feels as if Dove has chosen to appropriate one women’s liberation movement in the name of creating their own social media campaign.

Dove’s #freethepit campaign is just the latest, local example in what is called Commodity Feminism, also known as “Femvertising” and “Empowertising.” 

Commodity Feminism

Commodity Feminism refers to the way companies will align themselves to feminist ideas and imagery, all because it will help them sell more products. Similar to how companies use Greenwashing to create a false public image of being eco-friendly, companies use feminist buzzwords to sell products to women, such as alway’s #likeagirl campaign.

If you’re not thinking too hard about it, these campaigns may seem full of liberal or progressive ideas, but keep in mind these are giant multi-billion dollar companies. These movements come out of allegiance to their investors, not grassroots activism. Logically, it only benefits companies to keep women, their main clientele, happy and buying. If dissing women would have made these companies money instead, you can bet they would have.

The way these commercials work is to associate women’s power in society with their buying power. Since women have money, they have power, and with this money they can buy things to pamper themselves. 

These ‘pamper products’ tend to be geared towards unpleasant ‘luxuries’ like shaving, waxing, disguising odors, and dieting- all things to make a woman more conventionally sexually attractive, if not to men, then at least themselves. This in turn increases a woman’s self confidence. Femvertising creates the illusion of an equal society, where the more money women spend, the more power they have. 

Often, this ‘type’ of ‘feminism’ is targeted at middle to upper class, heterosexual white women and neglects the experiences of BIPOC, trans, and disabled women. But where there’s money to be made, the ‘inclusion’ will eventually follow, if femvertising is not an example in itself!

A deodorant by any other name would smell just as sweet. Whether you call it Commodity Feminism, Femvertising, or Empoweritsing, the fact remains that the visual and written language of this advertising still is meant to obscure how Dove is still marketing off the insecurities of women.

How Feminist is Dove, Really?

In the same survey that Dove sources to use as slogans and quotes for its advertising campaign, “80% of women believe society promotes an ‘ideal’ underarm; most say the ‘ideal’ underarm should be hairless, smooth, odorless, and even-toned.” (Dove Underarm Confidence Survey).

You don’t see the mention of anything other than hair in Dove’s slogans because… well, to encourage women to not judge armpits based on odor would be a bit counterintuitive to the interests of a deodorant company.

This isn’t the first time Dove and OgiIvy’s partnership has encountered controversy for their ads. In fact, the debut of the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ” in 1994 is considered to be one of the first ‘Femvertising’ Campaigns.  As part of the “ Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” there is no digital retouching in any ads, and all photographs are approved by women. And yet, in their casting calls, Dove has continually searched for women with “no tattoos, perfect skin,[and] bodies that aren’t too curved or too athletic.”

In this new #freethepits campaign, we see that the ‘no tattoos’ rule has been lifted, but the models chosen still fit within a restrictive standard of beauty (light, clear, unwrinkled skin and uncontroversial body types.)

And for an ad campaign based in New York City, there are no South or East Asian women featured in the photographs, with South Asian/ Brown girls being one of the primary demographics in America historically especially to be ostrasized for having body hair. The ad campaign also didn’t consider representing anybody older or visually disabled.

Compared to the other full upper body shots of the ad campaign, there is one close up of an ethnically ambiguous woman that perhaps is meant to serve as an all encompassing diversity figure for any body that wasn’t otherwise represented. 

Femvertising aside, when we dig a little deeper and recognize that Dove is the baby of its much larger parent company, Unilever, Dove’s integrity regarding its pro-women campaign seems compromised Unilever has come under fire for human rights issues in its supply chain, including slavery and forced child labor in palm oil and cocoa plantations.

I’m all for freeing the pits, but I think Dove should work on liberating people – or not enslaving them– before it “liberates” women’s armpits.

If you’re interested in learning more about Commodity Feminism, I recommend “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of A Sensibility” by Rosalind Gill, where I sourced much of the information about commodity feminism in this article. I also sourced information from “The Rise of Femvertising: Authentically Reaching Female Consumers” by Elisa Becker-Herby.

The post Something Stinks with Dove’s New #freethepits Campaign appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Secret meetings
Giggles in the hall
25 Nespresso pods
Addicted to the cause
Sitting in your office
Just to feel your calm

Did not know how much I needed you
You were my closest confidant
Held me up, when I just could not
A whole ass disaster
I know I am a lot
Didn’t matter
You never brought it up
-Work bestie

Coming alive

A life of routine I lived
Day in and day out
Being the character, I need to be
In the different layers of life
Trying hard not to make waves
Always been a quiet girl
Some things never change

Then comes this firebird
Young and beautiful
Suffering in different ways
I open my home

I have been where you are
Feeling the world against you
Being young and not knowing
Inexperienced and scared

The years have made me stronger
Come under my wing
I can protect you
Flourish here
If you need

My little firebird
Brave and loud
Her opinions are known
Confrontation welcomed

I admire her candor
For being who she is
Not dividing herself into layers
To fit the scenery

I may be older in years
But you are fiercer in heart
I have much to learn from you
You have ignited a flame in me
-sister

Growing

Learning to say no
A blessing and a curse
Still every time that word leaves my lips
My stomach cringes for the response

Surprisingly, many just accept and move on
I am flabbergasted and disappointed
It took me so long to learn

Do not be afraid
To take up space

Thirty something

Just starting to feel like an adult
People judging my unattached life
I am more than belonging to a man
Life is bigger than the box society demands
Counting my blessings for this body
For my success and independence
It is not that I do not welcome love
I just don’t let it define me

Just because I am not a trophy
Does not mean I am not happy
The freedoms I worked so hard to earn
I enjoy them day in and day out

And if one day someone
Man, women, come along
I welcome them with open arms
It is not a need that is required
But an addition that would be a cherry
On top of an already fulfilling life

The post a collection appeared first on The New Absurdist.

The day was too early and too gray to wake. I peeled the scab of the comforter away from  the raw yawning of my bare legs and grabbed the bundle of clothes that would dress me in all  shades of seriousness for work. I combed my morning straight through with the prongs of usual  routine: shower, breakfast, cup of tea. Keys that clack together as they lock the door and a car  that takes two hruffing times to start. The commute takes an hour without comment, with no  apology for the length of road or the time not given back. 

It’s odd to watch the warming start: sunrise cracks the blank-egg sky like a thumb yolking out color, and then the gray clouds trundle back in and smother it. Patchy weather. A  fidgeting indecision in the rain that would and wouldn’t fall for want of sunlight after all. But the rain came anyway. I watched the distortions of thick and heavy drops plop and bulge along the  windshield. I turned the windshield nob and watched the wiper slay the brief full-thoughts of  droplets, wet, depressing down the pane. 

The road turned, gradual, a long unwinding, and the marshy swamplands fogged the left  side of my car with low, disgruntled trees and furrowed brush. I side-eyed the landscape. There  was no one on the road so I risked distraction. The causeway I was driving on stretched over  miles of tangled wetland, and I watched the gray things blur. It felt barren, mottled. For all the  life that sprouts from such wet earth, it all looked dead. Gnarled, fetal things curling under the  thumbnail of the world. Pressed into bogs of time. Twisted, shriveled things, and the howls of  shorebirds swooping by, snapping up shimmering pulses from the mucked up womb. Womb,  tomb—what was the use? You could try and try, but what wouldn’t still goes on and simply  would not work—wouldn’t for a long time. Life doesn’t beget life alone. It begets sore tries and  failure to thrive. 

My eyes detoured back to the road ahead. A few gulls were swaying in the wind,  dropping crabs that shrapneled in collision with the shoulder of the road. I wanted to get away  from those pops of life vanishing into fragmented parts. My fingers tightened around the steering  wheel as I tapped the accelerator, but a gull cut in front of my windshield, and I swerved as  another bird dropped its half-devoured meal onto the hood of my car. There were two thumps  and a slap. The slap happened first. The thumps knocked me cold. One was my headlight and  fender plummeting into the wet bog and running solidly into an idle, slanting tree. The second  was my forehead into the steering wheel. The gray behind my eyelids prickled, and I sank into a bodily sleep.

Numb, I came to. A partial fish face looked at me through the windshield. Its body had rolled up  the car as the vehicle force-braked against the tree. The mackerel sheen of the head and his  ribbed tailbone had slapped down from the sky and settled like a sweeping bruise on the skin of  my car. I felt the water of the marsh already wrapped like socks around my bloated ankles, the  water pulling itself up my pant leg hand over cold hand, and I knew I was too dizzy to seriously  move. I rested my cheek on the steering wheel and probed my forehead with my fingers feeling  for the goop of blood that was drying like oil paint to the canvas of my bleach-blind headache. I  watched the fish as my eyes dipped in and out of focus. Watched the gills flap in the wind and  the bottom lip blubber as if about to talk. The one eye, smooshed against the glass, did a curious  thing and blinked—one time, two, three. 

“My god, lady, you’re bleeding.” 

I snorted, pathetically, my weight thrown forward onto the steering wheel, my feet  stirring up tidal waves in the water that was slowly filling the car from some unseen rent in the  framework. I shifted my legs and spoke from the side of my mouth as my cheek slumped on the  bar of the steering wheel. “You should see yourself. Not too shabby, I think. The blood that is.  Me.” 

“Do you ever ask how we get like this?” The fish twisted eagerly. 

“Get like what?” I asked. 

“Falling out of the air when you least expect it. Dislodged-like. Certainly didn’t plan it.  After all, I’m a sea thing. I glub about in water. You think you could trust that staying the same, but now here.” The fish’s eye swirled, rotating in its head, as it took in the interior of my car— ripped ceiling cloth, junk tossed onto the back seat, water rising. 

“At least it’s raining.” I grumbled. 

“That’s like air bubbles in the sea—useless if you’re drowning.” 

“Do you drown in air?” 

“It’s a sort of choking—this sort of falling down into unfamiliar territory. Purged from  whatever body steadies you.” 

“Expels you,” I mumbled into my arm. 

“Hmmm?” 

I dismissed him with a slight shake of my head. “There’s water in here. You know, for  drowning or, uh, not choking.” My brain hummed. I slowly dragged my feet and felt the water  slosh around my ankles, quickly regenerating, gushing into the brief emptiness left by my legs— like tides grasping around the legs of a pier. Toppling. Humming—my brain. “I hope it doesn’t  sink any further. The car, that is. I don’t feel I can get up just yet.” 

“Yeah, don’t tell me.” The fish flashed its skeletal tail in the air behind him. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Pain blushed out of my forehead. I felt woozy and  tried to grip the steering wheel with my hands, but my fingers were too sore, dented with impact. The fish head called to me. “So why do you think it happens? This falling?” “What falling? I didn’t fall. Nothing fell.” My eyes flared open angrily then immediately  cringed as my head throbbed with the sudden movement. The fish blinked. “Sure you’ve fallen. You were happy and smiling and gurgling, and then a few feet into  the air of your life and whatever was buoyancy dropped you. Or maybe that’s just me or anyway… And now, you’re here poking at your rib-bones, finger painting with your blood, and  you’re wondering why? Surely the world isn’t all that different. So, something fell inside.” “Something fell inside.” 

“Quite.” The fish’s mouth gaped open and closed. 

“I feel so alone.” 

The fish’s eye twitched. “Is that what fell?” 

“No. I don’t know.” 

“Do you want a family?” 

My chest clenched, and I shrugged sharply. My whole body ached in extension of the car  wreck. “That’s not something you plan on your own. You can’t just will it into being. No.” “It isn’t?” 

“No. It’s not like you point into the crowd and say, Yup, that’s the person I want to fuck a  family out of. It comes from mutual choice and ability. Ability to… and someone who wants to  stick around. Someone who sticks, you know? Not someone so easily shaken out.” 

“Oh. Well—I guess it’s different for a fish. I had a family of a sort. A big family— huge—little swimmers. Hard to be lonely when there’s ten more just like you bumping around in  your swim. And I guess—” 

A gull flapped down on the car and stripped a ribbon of flesh from the gray-scaled fish. I  raised my hand and slapped the windshield which scared the buzzard off. My arm fell limply  back to my lap. “You were saying?” 

“Lonely: I guess I’m used to more company. So I would ask if you’ve got company?” “Oh, no. Not anymore.” 

“Well, what about a hobby?”

“I’m infertile.” 

“Infertile in dreams, you mean?” 

My palm cradled my abdomen, and I rubbed my head gently along the top of the steering  wheel. “I guess you can say that.” 

“Do you feel stalled?” 

“No, no—life doesn’t feel like that,” I pushed myself away from the steering wheel and  leaned back in my seat, lopsided with headache, eyeing the fish. “It doesn’t feel idle or stalling.  It feels like a current, and it’s rushing in a deaf static all around me, and I am bound by a—by a  fishing line, if you will, to a sunk fishing rod wedged in unbudgable rocks at the bottom of all  

that rushing, and I’m flapping around but not swimming. There’s no living. No dreaming. No  company. No one. Nothing—do you understand? It’s just me at the bottom. Nothing sticks. It’s  just me.” 

The fish blinked its eye. The skeletal tail tapped uncomfortably against the glass. “No.  No, see, I don’t understand. I think that’s very rare to find a fish tied up like that… I think  sometimes the current rushes, and there’s greater joy in spreading your fins and following.  Sometimes you look back along your spine,” the fish demonstrated by curling his head back to  look at his tail, “and what you find is that what you thought was a line was only a stroke of  sunlight that confused the water. Do you understand? That it’s just confusion? Madness to flap  around like that? Not a real line. Not a real trap. There is no bottom for a fish, only rising up. A  sinking skyward when we’re done. You see?” 

“No. No, I don’t see. I’m not a fish.” I pinched my eyes shut. 

“May I tell you a story?”

I stayed quiet. Still. Listening for the nothing moving inside of me. My hand smoothed  over my abdomen. 

“About a fisherman,” the fish continued, “who once stopped by the wave I was riding  on.” 

The fish waited a moment and then went on, “His name was Gabe. He came across me  one night when I was testing the shallows, and he told me about him and his wife. Kept me in a  bucket on his little skiff and told me he’d let me go if I only listened. So, naturally, I did. 

“He wanted to tell me about his wife, he said. How it had been a year since her death,  you see? And she was right pretty and wore her life as well as she could. Gabe wiped his nose on  the back of his hand and continued, Well, it was a night like tonight. A night like tonight, and I’ll  never forget. Never forget how she changed the tides for me. For both of us, really. See: when we  were younger, her and I, we tried to conceive. Wanted a big family. All the company our little  home could keep. He said to me, he says, They were unable to hold anything. Nights, his wife,  Martha, would take to her bed and just lay there, despondent, cribbing herself under the covers.  No more nights siting up by the fireplace, no more talking over cups of joe, nothing. She would  just go to her room with the lights off and just curl into the dark like the echo of the sea curls into  the coil of a shell. Just wouldn’t move. 

“So I started taking myself out at nights. Would row out here on the water and just watch  the stars twisting about like little minnows or some sort in the reflection of the water as it furled  off the boat. Would row real slow so as not to disturb them, but a few always spun out. 

“And one night, long after we’d given up and age was starting to fray and loosen the  waistbands of our knuckles from holding on so tight, and the skin around our eyes finally  stopped shrugging from looking so hard for the damn thing, dear Martha, my shell of a wife, 

uncoiled from her grief and, instead of remaining under the blankets, followed me outside. She  followed him right outside, he told me. Gabe said, He had already settled himself into his little  boat, was about to release the rope from the dock and shove off, and Martha done called out his  name. ‘Gabe, stop!’ He stopped. And helped her climb in and spread the blanket he kept under  his bench across their knees—a shared square of warmth—little frail and worn-down thing. And  when they were skimming along the shoreline, the man rowing and the wife dipping her fingers  in, she shivered and made a grasp for Gabe’s hand, ‘Wait, wait,’ she said. He stopped rowing  and just watched her face watching the wake. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘All these stars.’ She peered into  the water. ‘Yes,’ he said, just watching her watch the water. Didn’t look at the stars. Seen them  all before. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘yes, they’re quiet.’ Martha looked up at him, ‘Grief can be like  that. Quiet.’ She smiled. ‘Gabe, I can imagine each shard of star in this vast fluid dark is one of  ours. One of our tries, and maybe grief is quiet like that. And it distills all our failures and all  our tries in vastness. In waves that make them shine for the mere trying. The attempt. What we’ve  survived hasn’t been small after all.’ Not for one moment did my eyes leave her face, Mr. Fish,  and I told her, I said, ‘That’s a right pretty way of looking at them.’ Martha settled closer—her  knee touching my knee, and that dear love said, ‘I would like some tea or some coffee. Something  warm to drink. Can we go home now?’ The fisherman smiled. He told me, he knew when he was  welcome and her affair with loneliness was over. And they went back to that home of no holding  and warmed themselves to living. 

“He let me go after that. Said he wanted to be on his way, and I’d be wanting to be on  mine too. And told me to say hello to all our fallen stars—not one too many, not one too few.”  The fish fell silent and blinked at me.

“I need to go.” I swiped the wetness from my cheek and thumbed the seatbelt buckle off  of me. The lock released and unwound the restraint from my body. And I sighed with the  soreness of my being thrown about. “I can’t do this. God—so alone.” I squeezed my eyes closed  and hugged my chest. Folding in. 

“No, you’re not.” 

I opened my eyes and looked at the fish who was shifting side to side trying to get a  better look at me, and repeated, “You’re not.” 

“I’m talking to a fish.” 

“No, I mean—I saw something on the way down that you may have missed as you were  careening into that tree.” 

“What’s that?” 

“You’ll see.” 

“Mmm.” I slumped forward slightly, testing my legs by lifting them one after the other.  “I need to leave. I can’t stay here.” 

“I wish I could walk from where I land. At least you have that going for you.” The fish  nodded at me slowly. “But even in this moment it is not that bad because I’ve made a friend in  falling.” 

I shook my head and shouldered open the door. More water rushed in as the car tipped to  it. I stepped out and was up to my thighs in marsh. Looking around, I saw other cars crashed into  trees, into bog, into brush—in various stages of sinking—doors ajar where others had fallen into  the same helpless ditch. Swamped. Flooded. Cars gutted of people—real people. Others who had opened the doors of their crash and walked off. Walked from where they landed.

I nodded, feeling the warmth from my head spread down to the extremities of my body,  and turned back to my mangled companion. “So, falling is the least lonely thing about living?” The fish slapped its bony tail on the glass. “So falling is the answer, it would seem.”

The post What Falls When We’re Not Looking appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Leading up to its theatrical release, Greta Gerwig’s third feature film continues to be all anyone and everyone have been talking about. This and of course, its tonal and seemingly gendered juxtaposition with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023): a beautifully organic, fan-driven internet phenomenon that will forever hold a black-and-pink space in cinema history. 

But I want to focus on the woman of the hour herself. The doll. The myth. The legend. Barbie. (Trademark of Mattel Inc.) 

Who is she behind the painted face? What was she made for? 

Growing up, I hated Barbie. But not for any socially relevant reason like the size of her (white) body or internalized misogynistic one like the perceived size of her brain as suggested by her blonde hair, love for fashion, and 1992 struggles in math class. 

I hated Barbie like I hated all hard dolls. I hated the way their plastic bodies felt. I hated that it hurt if you stepped or fell on top of them. And quite frankly, they scared me. Barbies, Bratz, American Girls, you name it. Before I opened presents at my birthday parties ages 3 to 5, I would announce this to the friends and family gathered around me, immediately making several of my parents’ friends feel bad as they had inevitably bought these dolls for me as a kind, thoughtful gesture. I even wrote a whole essay about my hatred and fear of hard dolls in the third grade; it really was that serious. 

Instead, I played with Groovy Girls, Manhattan Toy’s line of fashionable dolls. They were marketed as the funky and more ambiguously diverse alternative to Barbie and introduced to me by my aunt for that exact reason. But their most important feature? They were soft and I could sleep comfortably with them in bed. (There was an East Asian-looking Groovy Girl named Caring Caitlin, but at 5 years old, I didn’t have the language nor context to express why that meant so much to me at the time.) 

Groovy Girls were not as popular as Barbie. Not even close. In 2019, Manhattan Toys retired the Groovy Girls, while Barbie today and more broadly, Mattel, are stronger than ever. Those poor Groovy Girls never had a chance. Since her creation in 1959, Barbie has always been more than just a doll. She herself is a brand with over 40 films (I adored many of them as a child despite hating the doll itself), TV shows, a now taken down-website filled with online games, skincare/makeup lines, and clothing. 

She also embodies a movement: packaged yet personified feminism of the past and present. She’s held over 200 jobs and with that, has her own money, dreamhouse, plane, etc. Barbie was the first toy to reflect and encourage the unique aspirations of little girls. They didn’t have to play and train for motherhood anymore; now they could be whoever they wanted to be. As the 2023 film so accurately states, “Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever”: a sentiment that summarizes the great reckoning Margot Robbie’s Barbie confronts and the reason behind the commercial success of Barbie the doll. 

Greta Gerwig, along with the actresses in the film, will be the first to tell you that Barbie is “most certainly a feminist film.” Robbie Brenner, Executive Producer of Mattel Films, and other Mattel executives are quick to say the exact opposite. Whose words do we believe? Whose words hold more weight? Is it Gerwig, the woman who co-wrote and directed this film, or is it Brenner, the woman spearheading the years-long rollout of the next MCU: Mattel Cinematic Universe? (More on that later.) 

Greta Gerwig is an artist. A visionary. A filmmaker. Robbie Brenner, as she stands as Executive Producer, speaks for Mattel, the multinational corporation whose executive leadership team consists mostly of men. In fact, in the over 60 years Barbie has existed, Mattel has never identified Barbie as explicitly feminist; instead, she’s been associated with vague promotions of female empowerment and girl power. “Feminist” is too politically charged for Barbie; it’s us, society at large, that has projected feminism onto a plastic doll. 

Where does this leave a film that’s smashing box office records with a multimillion-dollar omnichannel marketing campaign to match? 

Well, as it will reveal—perhaps in a punchy five-minute-or-so monologue—somewhere sort of in between. 

Spoilers ahead. 

True to Barbie canon, every Barbie in Barbieland is…everything. She’s the President, a mermaid, a diplomat, a lawyer, a doctor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the Supreme Court Justices, a Nobel Prize-winning author, and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. The lead protagonist, Margot Robbie’s Barbie, is “Stereotypical Barbie,” presumably a fashion model and the enduring original from 1959. She’s the brand, nay cultural icon, the feminist, nay fascist symbol, the role model, nay impossible beauty standard. She’s the most everything anyone could ever be. 

And the film does its best to acknowledge and tackle this dichotomy, albeit in chaotic, rushed scenes. You have to remember: Mattel’s CEO is watching Barbie’s every move, both Will Ferrell’s unnamed character in the film and the actual current Mattel CEO, Ynon Kreiz. 

(Barbie’s also a major plastic pollutant and the factories she’s made in have a long history of unsafe and inhumane working conditions, but that’s a bigger issue that doesn’t begin and end with Barbie. Mattel would never want you to know that though.)

Margot Robbie’s performance as Barbie is grappling with the culmination of ideals, expectations, and politics she represents is a marvel to behold. But it is America Ferrera’s monologue as Gloria, receptionist to Mattel’s CEO (Ferrell’s version), that has followed people long after they leave the theater. Ferrera articulates the sobering reality of the female experience, answering the film’s central question: if all this pressure is placed upon a doll, how does this manifest for women in the real world? 

Literal impossibility. A paradox that would make philosophers the likes of Plato and Bertrand Russell shudder. 

Gloria’s feminism is pure. It’s real. It’s relatable. 

At the same time, it’s pretty uncontroversial and not revolutionary; in other words, it’s perfect for Mattel. This merely enhances the trendy Barbiecore aesthetic taking the world by storm. 

Feminism goes far beyond the individual. It’s systemic. It’s global. It’s inherently political. 

That isn’t to say Barbie is completely devoid of 21st century politics. One can deduce where Gerwig stands on more contentious social issues concerning Americans today, say for instance the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. In Barbieland, the Supreme Court is packed with women until Ryan Gosling’s Ken, who I have purposely not mentioned until now, brings patriarchy and unravels everything the Barbies have ever worked for in a day. 

With the issue of bodily autonomy, Barbie just scratches the surface. The key difference is these hints are far more subtle than the otherwise spoon-fed messaging on what it means to be a woman. Mattel has to appeal to the pro-lifers after all. 

But I’ll cut the film some slack. The overt yet simple feminism of Barbie works for the narrative too. The Barbies are still dolls, empty vessels made of toxic plastic. In the end, Robbie’s Barbie decides to become human, accepting that she will realize how much worse the real world is in time. 

This time, however, she won’t be experiencing it alone. She has Gloria and Gloria’s daughter, Sasha, to lean on. Gloria may be a Mattel employee, but she’s, more importantly, the owner of Robbie’s Barbie. 

Which brings me back to my original question. Who is Barbie? 

When we push everything we’ve pushed onto Barbie aside, what is left? 

A doll. No, still not just any doll. She’s your doll.

She’s an extension of every child that’s played with her. 

And Mattel knows this. Boy, do they. 

Fourteen Mattel properties are in active development for their respective film adaptations including but not limited to Barney, Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, UNO, View Master, and more. 

Hollywood has our nostalgia in a chokehold, squeezing out every last dollar. 

Who cares about the controversies that have plagued Mattel as a corporation? Thanks to Barbie, they now have enough advertising to distract us for at least a decade. Unlike Will Ferrell’s character, Ynon Kreiz is no bumbling idiot. 

I get it, I do. If by some miracle there’s a Groovy Girl film, you know I’ll be the first in line. 

As another self-proclaimed pop culture nerd, I’ve fallen victim to the consumerist dystopia that comes out of fictional “utopias” such as Barbieland. (I’m staring right at my Harry Potter and Marvel Funko Pop collection.) You can use fantasy and capitalism as an escape! 

It’s not wrong to be nostalgic. It’s not wrong to revisit our favorite stories—in this case, toys—and reimagine them with a fresh new take. Greta Gerwig had a point to make. A point that was diluted to appease a billion dollar company, but a point nonetheless. 

The announcement of Robbie Brenner’s MCU has me nervous. The joint success of Barbie and Oppenheimer is exciting and yet it is happening against a backdrop of a historical double SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike. We talk of million dollar earnings when there are writers and actors who can barely afford to live. 

Barbie is feminist and it is not. 

Barbie belongs to you and she does not. 

At the core of Barbie, the film, and Barbie, the doll, is a fascinating push-and-pull between art and money, consumer and corporation. 

Looking back, Groovy Girls were not nearly as interesting. (I love them dearly, Bác Xuyến/Aunt Kelly; I’m kidding.) 

If only I had inserted myself into this conversation sooner as a 3 year old.

The post What Was Barbie Made For?  appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Brundage is the artist behind the wildly sensational covers of Weird Tales during the 1930s and was largely responsible for the success of their sales during a depression ridden America. She was revolutionary for many reasons, not only steamy covers for science fiction and fantasy, but as a woman making them, as well as her involvement in progressive causes such as civil rights for African Americans and the labor movement.

However, as with all legends, her caveats are overlooked. The existing scholarship on Brundage’s artwork often frames itself in the context of Brundage being a leftist and a woman artist, largely from a feminist angle.  It might make her more palatable as a feminist hero to frame her in a solely progressive light, but it is reductionist and overlooks important themes in her work, particularly her inclination to ‘yellow peril’ imagery and other orientalist themes. 

In this paper, I will consider the existing scholarship on Brundage’s work for Weird Tales through the analysis of one of Brundage’s most popular covers: The Weird Tales September 1933 issue, which corresponds to Robert E. Howard’s story The Slithering Shadow. I’ll also be offering my own input as an art historical scholar. I will discuss how queer-coded depictions of kink were another, although less obvious example of orientalist imagery in  1930s America. Finally, unlike prior scholarship on Brundage’s work, I will consider her art in relation with the writing and authors they corresponded to rather than as art alone.

1930s BDSM:  The Slithering Shadow 

The September 1933 issue of Weird Tales was one of the most controversial, and popular covers that Brundage created. Like her other illustrations, the original drawing was created using soft pastels on an illustration board before being printed on pulp paper for mass production. This cover depicts a scene from Robert E. Howard’s story, The Slithering Shadow.  Two women are set against a brilliantly red background and a massive black abstract shadow. The dark-haired woman holds a whip and seems ready to whip her victim again, a blonde woman chained by the wrists pulling against her bonds. 

The dark-haired woman wears loose, skimpy garments reminiscent of outfits worn by Middle Eastern belly dancers. Unlike her counterpart, the blonde woman is nude.  She embodies many characteristics of a classic ‘Brundage Girl, ’ including the character soft pinkness and triangular perkiness of her breasts.¹ It’s likely that the hairstyles of both of these women are based on references that Margaret Brundage had available to her in the time through fashion magazines and nudie mags, hence the coifs and curls.² The blonde woman’s chains are not fixed to anything; they float in space. Similarly, the two women look as if they have just been placed into this space. There is no illusion of depth or foreshortening, creating a poster-like quality to the cover similar to Brundage’s other Weird Tales work. 

Spurlock vs. Yaztek : The existing writing on Brundage and her work.

At the current moment, Stephen D. Korshak and J. David Spurlock portray themselves as the torchbearers to Brundage’s legacy, reviving long-lost interest held in Brundage’s artwork through a book dedicated solely to her: The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art.  

Taking a different approach, Lisa Yaztek frames Brundage in the context of women working in science fiction from the 1930s to 1960s in her book Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction.  

Both of these historians consider Brundage’s role as a female artist working during that period, and the effects it had in her work. However, they take different interpretations on what this meant. 

A woman making women

Spurlock considers the way that Brundage created these empowered female figures in the light of her own leftist ideas and interest in civil rights. According to him, being a female artist in the 1930s who created sexual pieces was inherently a means of pushing back against the norm.³ He claims that Brundage was both trying to inject her own personality and point of view into her ‘women in peril’ pieces.⁴  He also frames Brundage’s ability to get her job for Weird Tales within the context of her social scene and husband in Chicago.⁵ 

In Spurlock’s opinion, while Brundage’s illustrations catered to the male gaze, they also offered a way for women to reclaim space in a patriarchal society. He points out that in the 1930s, it was typical to show women as weak and cowering victims.⁶ He considers the ‘Brundage girls’ to “have a unique sense of dignity” compared to other illustrations portraying women of the time.⁷ Of particular note, Spurlock points out that when there are scenes of bondage or subjugation in Weird Tales, Brundage frequently had a woman in charge.⁸ 

The September 1933 issue showcases one of these scenes. Spurlock considers scenes like these to be examples of feminine strength, where these female figures can be viewed as heroic and powerful compared to weak and submissive alternatives.⁹ Their strength is further emphasized by how they struggle and resist against evil, without signs of pain or abuse on their body or emotional distress.¹⁰ We can see this in the September 1933 issue, the blond woman pulls against her chains but she does not seem to be in emotional or physical pain. Rather, her movement is considerably beautiful. She looks as if she might be stretching or lying down. Despite her binds, she is in complete control of her body.

How does a female artist make art?

Lisa Yaztek places Brundage within the context of other female illustrators of the time, for science fiction and otherwise. While Spurlock only briefly mentions Brundage’s history in fashion as something that bored her, Yaztek elaborates on how this background in ‘woman’s art’ led to Brundage’s work in Weird Tales. Yaztek points out how the aesthetic conventions of the 1930s for women and by female artists of the time lent themselves to female illustrators in science fiction.¹¹  Working in soft mediums was likely something Brundage picked up from her fashion illustration days, the familiar look of which might have contributed to some of her popularity with the Weird Tales female audience.  Furthermore, because fashion magazines of the time depicted women in bright colors and marketed a progressive and active lifestyle for women, Brundage was skilled in both portraying active women and textiles.¹²  

Like Spurlock, Lisa Yaztek considers the ‘Brundage Girls’ to be strong female figures. For her, Brundage is one of many female artists creating female bodies infused with power.¹³ Furthermore, while Brundage’s illustrations catered to the male gaze they “endowed their female subjects with personality, using their subject’s reactions to the situations at hand to critically assess masculine behavior.¹⁴  Yaszek considers the Brundage women to push back against patriarchal and Enlightenment-based conventional standards for women. Her illustrations challenge a “good woman’s place” within a rational universe.¹⁵ 

Both Yaztek and Spurlock agree that Brundage both as a female artist and her background of women’s art in fashion meant she had a good grasp on female anatomy.¹⁶ Compared to male artists who were trained in a classical mode of representational painting, women artists were simply better at drawing women and fabrics.¹⁷

Caveats: The Progressive leftist and her use of racist, orientalist imagery

However, while Spurlock frames the Brundage women within Brundage’s desire for equal rights for minorities, Yaztek takes it a step in the other direction. She does not skip over how the ‘Brundage girls’ or Brundage’s background in women’s art were used to further xenophobic sentiment of 1930s America. Brundage’s background in fashion illustration meant she knew about Eastern fabrics and textiles and could incorporate them easily into the villains portrayed on the covers of Weird Tales. Yaztek points out that Brundage’s covers fused emerging twentieth-century fears of “yellow and black perils” with a colonial American Gothic style of painting. ‘Oriental’ men were the villains of these illustrations, taking the place of the ‘wild savage’ in colonial American Gothic art.¹⁸ 

The feminist focus on her role as a female artist creating female art often means scholars put a more favorable, progressive and feminist spin on Brundage’s illustrations, especially considering her own leftist views. This leaves scholarship on her more xenophobic and orientalist themes in her work to be wanting. I appreciate Lisa Yaztek’s analysis on Brundage’s background in women’s art lending itself to her expertise in creating racially charged ‘yellow peril’ and ‘red danger’ imagery, but I also notice that it specifically points out the male-female dynamic within this xenophobic imagery. The evils of the ‘Orient’ are portrayed through an oppressive male figure attacking a blond, beautiful and innocent woman who is easily read as a symbol for America.¹⁹ I’d like to expand on that.

As such, covers like the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales don’t seem to register as particularly xenophobic at first glance. After all, there are no men on the cover, and there are no obvious signs of ‘slanty eyed’ stereotypes or plotting, magical brown-skinned villains like there are in some of Brundage’s other work. I’d like to consider how the female-on-female dynamics in this cover were a way of expressing xenophobic and homophobic attitudes of 1930s America. This is not to take away from more ‘pro-woman’ readings into Brundage’s work or the progressive characteristics of her illustrations, but rather to consider her illustrations with nuance and as products of the time.   

What is The Slithering Shadow made for?

As I was researching, I noticed that scholarship of Brundage’s covers seem to consider the art as stand-alone pieces. Spurlock acts as if the choices Brundage makes to show women in peril or flagellation scenes are completely her own as an artist. He also considers illustrations like this, scenes of bondage with a woman in charge to be visual examples of female power and strength pushing back against conventional norms.²⁰  And while it wasn’t necessary for the covers to wholeheartedly accurately reflect the contents of the magazine as long as they were visually appealing to buyers, Brundage did read each written issue of Weird Tales before creating her illustrations.²¹ The choices she made as an artist were actively based on the written content of the stories, and in the case of the September 1933 issue that story would be Robert E. Howard’s The Slithering Shadow.  

We miss an important analysis into Brundage’s work both as a whole and specifically into this September 1933 issue if we don’t consider the writing the visuals accompany. The context in which the writing and the story were created offer insight to how the visuals must have viewed as well. We have insight directly from Brundage on how the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales was received by the public. We also have writing from Robert E. Howard himself that explains some of the thought processes in the themes in his work such as The Slithering Shadow. Seeing how these two worked together so frequently and were big fans of each other’s work,²² it seems only fitting to consider their partnership when analyzing Brundage’s work. 

Fred Taraba offered this comment on the September 1933 issue: “This is more than a picture of flagellation.”²³ Brundage herself seemed to agree; in an interview she said “We had one issue that sold out! It was the story of a very vicious female, getting a hold of the heroine and tying her up and beating her. Well, the public apparently thought it was flagellation.” ²⁴ 

Despite her denial, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Brundage could not have had at least a little inkling on how the scene depicted flagellation for a few reasons. First, she was heavily involved in a counterculture social circle. She frequented the Dill Pickle Club, where artists, bohemian, and queer culture all came together and people would discuss different lifestyles and philosophies.²⁵ It’s highly likely that Brundage’s work took some kind of inspiration from this community. At the very least, she would have needed to figure out some kind of mental or visual reference for the cover illustration. Furthermore, Brundage was deeply familiar with Howard’s writing not only because she read through each issue of Weird Tales to hand pick scenes that she wanted to illustrate, but also because she was a huge fan of his work. He held similar sentiments towards her illustrations.²⁶  

Robert E. Howard and his obsession with kink and lesbian erotica

The Slithering Shadow is not simply about a villainess holding the heroine captive; both the story and the cover illustration clearly have queer and sexual elements. This doesn’t inherently mean that it was expressed in a positive light.  Howard regarded “lesbianism” as a way of showcasing the barbaric behavior of these fantastical and exotic realms in his writing and similar Weird Tales environments.²⁷ These moments of ‘lesbianism’ were never consensual, and always involved a villainous woman torturing her victim mercilessly.²⁸ At the same time, Howard’s extensive library on sadomasochism and “lesbianism,” and his own erotic poetry indicates that he had a fascination and deep interest in kink.²⁹ Howard knew that readers were interested in sexually deviant stories and illustrations and activities that challenged normal convention.³⁰  For readers that wanted “weird tales, ” this was about as weird as it could get. 

Regardless of whether Brundage considered the scene to be some form of erotic flagellation, the reality is that this sexual, sensual and queer-coded imagery was both hugely taboo and hugely popular with the Weird Tales audience. The September 1933 issue was so popular it sold out almost immediately. Taking a cue from this, Howard continued to show scenes of female on female flagellation and Brundage continued to illustrate them, as we can see from the December 1934 Weird Tales cover.  Other authors caught on that if they wanted to make the cover story, they were more likely to be chosen if they featured a woman in a state of undress.³¹ Showing scenes of sadomasochism or homoeroticism would also up their chances– after all, it was the scandal and sex that sold these magazines, even if they were about science fiction and fantasy. We can see this pattern catching on in the covers of January and March 1936 Weird Tale Issues. 

September 1933	December 1934	January 1936	March 1936

So how is this scene of lesbian BDSM “of the times?” 

Brundage’s covers may have portrayed women in positions of power and can be interpreted as working against society’s patriarchal views on a woman’s place in society, covers like the September 1933 Weird Tales were still examples of capitalizing and encouraging xenophobic attitudes of America of the time. Both Howard and Brundage’s work often centered around themes of barbarism and a romantic notion of uncivilized and exotic lifestyles. In the cover illustration, the dominatrix-like villainous has dark hair, probably based on the description that Howard offered for these characters in his writing. His character design plays into ‘good versus evil’ tropes; the blond woman is the virtuous heroine and the brunette woman is the harsh and cruel villainess.³²  These sentiments are reflected visually and brought to life by Brundage’s illustrations. As Yaztek mentioned, Brundage’s work frequently featured white, blond women in danger of an oppressor- often a ‘yellow peril’ or /red danger’ male.³³ Here the oriental stereotype is not a male, but note that the villainess is a dark haired woman wearing ‘Oriental’ clothing that Brundage was familiar with drawing. The woman herself is ethnically ambiguous, but certainly could be a Middle Eastern or Asian woman. By creating queer scenes within the context of ‘exotic’ and ‘fantasy’ worlds acts of non-heteronormative behavior were more acceptable to the public. At the same time, it was the homophobic and xenophobic attitudes of the time that Brundage and Howard employed with sexual imagery to make their content marketable.

Although homophobic and xenophobic attitudes contributed to the creation of sadomasochistic and queer coded illustrations and writing for Weird Tales, the covers still might have found appeal with female and queer audiences. Weird Tales had a relatively high proportion of women in their workspace. A decent percentage of the writers were women, as well as other artists and staff.³⁴ And while their readership was predominately heterosexual men, it certainly wasn’t limited to them.  In a discussion about the  later genre of 1950s and 1960s lesbian pulp, Paula Rabinowitz says “even if slip-wearing is not tied to a woman’s desire for women, its extravagant display of sexuality marks her as a sister rebel.”³⁵  Although this analysis pertains to work a couple decades later, I think this statement can be retrofitted to consider Brundage’s work considering both Korshak and Yaszek’s analysis of Brundage’s female figures. I also would like to consider that Brundage’s images could have been a predecessor for lesbian pulp fiction cover iconography. Lesbian pulp covers aided lesbian women on how to recognize each other by the way that they dressed through the depiction of risqué lingerie, which heterosexual women aligned to normal conventions would not find the need for.³⁶ In this way risqué and sexy fashion conveyed counterculture ideas available to women through pulp fiction cover illustrations.

The continuing effects of Brundage’s covers in art and media 

The scholarship around Brundage’s work is very clear on her impact as the ‘Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art.’ Before Margaret Brundage began producing iconic ‘women-in-peril’ cover illustrations for Weird Tales, science fiction pulp magazine covers mostly showed things like aliens and robots. She was the first of either sex whose covers featured nudes in science fiction.³⁷ As the editor of Weird Tales caught on that sexually charged imagery would help sell magazines and other pulp fiction magazines caught on, more sexualized and sensational imagery began showing up on their covers.³⁸ This type of iconography eventually translated over to comic books and mainstream media in years to come. Earlier, I discussed the possibility of Brundage’s artwork leading to more portrayals of queer-coded illustrations in mainstream media. Bobby Derie, a scholar on Howard’s writing, offers another angle. He points out that one month after the September 1933 Weird Tales, Dime Mystery debuted, the first of “shudder pulps” that focused on stories of torture and sadism on women.³⁹ He defines “The Slithering Shadow” as a potential marker indicating that there was an audience for this pulp genre.⁴⁰ Yaztek interprets Brundage’s legacy and iconography of strong and powerful women to continue in the work of female science fiction artists like Rowena Morill, Victoria Poyser-Lisi and Julie Bell.⁴¹

Concluding Thoughts

There is a strong temptation to portray Brundage as ‘ahead of her time’ due to a simplified conflation of her personal views and scholarship on her illustrations.  Her covers expressed her progressive and counterculture sentiments using her iconic women, but at the same time capitalized on xenophobic and homophobic attitudes in America.  By examining her artwork alongside the writing, it accompanied rather than considering them as stand-alone pieces, I think it helps us learn more about the motives behind creating certain types of visual imagery. It offers a more nuanced perspective into Brundage’s artmaking rather than flattening her artwork as inherently female-positive and progressive because she was a leftist and female artist.

Afterthoughts

Since I have the platform, I would also like to offer a brief review on the authors and scholars that I referenced throughout this essay. As a introduction and a book to peruse through the covers, Korshak and Spurlock’s book is adequate. However, the overall quality of the writing mediocre at its best, and repetitive and fanboyish at its worst. And the foreword by Rowena Morrill is truly awful. For a book about Brundage, Rowena Morrill barely seems to know anything about her. One of the most delusional quotes I can pick from the foreword is “The photo I saw of her looked very attractive. I have always thought it is a great advantage to the a woman in a male-dominated field. The art directors treat you better!” I could go on for a while about how insensitive and untrue this is, but there are literally interviews depicting Margaret Brundage’s experience in the book from Brundage herself that point out the contrary. I would much more highly reccomend Lisa Yaztek’s Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction. Although it may not market itself as sensationally as The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage, it offers much more substantial information on not only Brundage but other women working in the science fiction genre in the 1900s.

Citations:

1. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 35
2.  Ibid, 117.
3.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 148
4. Ibid, 147.
5. Ibid, 145-148.
6.  Ibid.
7.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 148.
8.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 148.
9. Ibid.
10.  Ibid.
11. Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 334.
12.  Ibid, 336.
13. Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 335.
14. Ibid,  333.
15.  Ibid.
16. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 149.
17.  Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 333.
18.  Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 335.
19. Ibid, 333.
20. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 148.
21. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 149.
22.  Ibid, 150.
23.  Fred Taraba. Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators & How they worked. (The Illustrated Press, 2011).
24.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 29.
25. George Hagenauer, “Wobbies and Weird Tales: Brundage’s Life and Marriage in Chicago,” in The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage, ed. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock ( Vanguard Productions, 2013), 114-115.
26.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 149-150. 
27.  Bobby Derie, “Conan and Sappho: Robert E Howard on Lesbians Part 1 & 2.” The Dark Man: Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies. (2017).
28.  Ibid.
29. Charles Hoffman, “Elements of Sadomasochism in the Fiction and Poetry of Robert E. Howard.”  The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, Volume 4, No. 2 (June 2009).
30. Bobby Derie, “Conan and Sappho: Robert E Howard on Lesbians Part 1 & 2.” The Dark Man: Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies. (2017).
31.  Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 19.
32. Charles Hoffman. Elements of Sadomasochism in the Fiction and Poetry of Robert E. Howard. The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, Volume 4, No. 2 (June 2009).
33.  Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press), 335.
34.   Lisa Yaztek, Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press), 396.
35. Paula Rabinowitz. Scenes of Reading Women: Feminism and Paperbacks: A Possible Origin Story. Australasian Journal of American Studies 37, no. 1 (2018), 195. 
36. Ibid. 
37. Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art (Vanguard Productions, 2013), 147.
38. Ibid, 148. 
39.  Bobby Derie, “Conan and Sappho: Robert E Howard on Lesbians Part 1 & 2.” The Dark Man: Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies (2017).
40.  Ibid.
41.  Lisa Yaszek,  Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Early Classics of Science Fiction) (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 340.

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