[CrackMonkey] [gkm@petting-zoo.net: Barbie.]

[Nick Moffitt]

----- Forwarded message from glen mccready <gkm at petting-zoo.net> -----
Forwarded-by: Bob Howe <bhowe at pratt.edu>

>From The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 19, 2001
     Volume XLVII, Number 19

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Work in Progress"
by Stephen T. Asma

pp. B17-18

(Excerpt)

[Cindy] Jackson is an American woman who, in the past 10 years, has had 29 
operations to transform herself into that cultural icon of beauty, the 
Barbie doll. When she was 34, her father died and left her a sizable 
inheritance, which she straightaway began to invest in her face-to-be. She 
had surgery to remove the bags under her eyes, she had implants put into 
her cheeks, her chin chiseled, her eyes enlarged, her makeup colors 
permanently tattooed, her jaw broken and sawed shorter, and so forth.

Most of my students said there was a significant difference between [French 
performance artist] Orlan and Jackson: Both employed the same cutting-edge 
medical technology, but while the means were comparable, the ends differed 
greatly. When asked why she is reconstructing herself to look like Barbie, 
Jackson replies that it is for power: "I used to seek pleasure from men, 
and now they seek it from me.... This is the ultimate feminist statement. I 
refuse to let nature decide my fate just because I missed out on the 
genetic lottery."


----- End forwarded message -----

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