Erica Rand

I've had this book on my list of books to read for about 6 years, and finally decided to borrow it from the library to start reading through the oldest books on my wish list. Six years ago, I was still figure skating a lot and this book seemed appealing through that lens, and also through the lens of being not-straight and generally interested in gender studies and feminism.

I'm still interested in most of those things (but not so much figure skating after having broken my ankle doing a back scratch spin) but this book was just not interesting. Perhaps it was too long. Perhaps it lacked a unifying theme. The book consists of many essays, which nominally revolve around the author's being an adult figure skater. This lack of cohesion meant that many of the essays rambled and ultimately went nowhere. The author brought up a lot of points about gender identity and race and lack of inclusion in elite sports, but didn't really take it anywhere.

Obviously, I didn't hate this book, or I would have stopped reading it much sooner. I kept going with the book in hopes that the book would finally arrive at some sort of destination. But it didn't.… (mere)

This book's provocative title promises a lot more than it delivers. Ostensibly a gathering of alternative play uses of Barbie, primarily from the sexual counterculture, the first half of the book is merely a history of the Barbie phenomenon through a feminist prism; this is far from new territory. The second half of the book comes closer to following the book's stated premise, but it also contains too much authorial voice, disintegrating at times to a kind of Facebook page from hell wherein the author overshares her tastes in television and music as well as bewailing the public's inability to grasp the gravity of her Barbie research and criticizing her own unwillingness to follow her evidence where she suspects that it leads. She also openly, and inappropriately for scholarship, advocates for enacting her socio-political agenda. Depending on your point of view, it's either very easy or very difficult to draw conclusions from her narrators; there are few real patterns to what they tell her, unless that they are usually ambivalent, ambiguous, and meandering. This book is clearly written, especially by sociology standards, short, and entertaining, and those merits are not to be scorned. However, a university press shouldn't be too proud of having issued this mishmash under its imprint.… (mere)