Atomic Bombshells

How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies

Isabelle Held (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

376 Seiten

2026
Duke University Press (Verlag)
9781478033103 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Februar 2026)
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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.

Isabelle Held is the Mellon Foundation Gender and LGBTQ History Postdoctoral Fellow at The Center for Women’s History at the New York Historical.

List of Illustrations ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
Nylon/Thread
1. Spinning Nylon: An Explosive History from Labs to Legs 29
2. Nylon and the Test Tube Girl: Racialized Gender Norms and Plastic Futures 56
Foam/Padding
3. Soft Power: Plastic Foams, Design, and Postwar Bodies 91
4. Outward, Upward, and Inward: Implanting Foam Foundationwear in the Postwar United States 121
5. Bombshells, Bombers, and Bumpers: Plastic Foam Sourcing and Women’s Bodies 159
Silicone/Fluid
6. Silicones on the Surface: Military-Industrial R&D, Postwar Conversion, and the Body 189
7. Silicones Beneath the Surface: Fluid Othering and Japan 214
8. Queering Silicones: Carol Doda and the Cogs of the FDA 240
Acknowledgments 283
Notes 287
Bibliography 339
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	17.2.2026
Zusatzinfo	77 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	445 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Design / Innenarchitektur / Mode
	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-13	9781478033103 / 9781478033103
Zustand	Neuware