Plastic Closets: Fashion Dolls, Queer Identity, and the Performance of Self
From Gay Bob and Earring Magic Ken to RuPaul and Trixie Mattel, this essay explores how fashion dolls became unlikely icons of queer identity, camp, drag, and gender performance — revealing how dolls have long shaped ideas about selfhood, glamour, and reinvention.
- memory
- takara dolls
- dolls and identity
- barbie doll
- earring magic ken
- folk dolls
- japanese fashion dolls
- collecting
- research
- gay billy doll
- jem
- archetypes
- dolls beyond play
- Gene Marshall Doll
- exhibit
- fashion doll history
- psychology of dolls
- americana
- kinship
- fashion dolls
- anthropology of doll
- deux ll doll
- ethnography of dolls
- Cissy
- Madame Alexander
- museum
- antique dolls
- queer history
- Mel Odom
- lady luminous