My Trans Barbie Dream House: Media Fantasies of Bad Gender Play

Lecture
October 13, 2022 at 5:30–7:30pm
Hybrid: Online and In-Person

Milieux seminar room, EV 11.705
1515 St-Catherine Street W., Concordia University

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Mattel advertises its 2022 Laverne Cox Tribute Barbie Doll as a “superhero” class toy that “amplifies the message of moving beyond societal expectations to live more authentically.” And yet, the co-existence of the Cox Barbie with an avalanche of bills seeking to prevent US children from accessing gender transition calls into question the value of such “good” representational trans objects and their imagined styles of play. This talk seizes on the gap between the trans media objects we have and the trans politics we need as a dream space (or “dream house”) that can sustain trans people’s desire for alternative fantasies of gender play. Contrasting Mattel’s Cox Barbie doll with the culture jamming and video activism of the Barbie Liberation Organization, it calls us to expand the boundaries of trans cultural production beyond the representational to include forms of play whose mediation might activate and spread resistant modes of trans desire.