This book uses one of the most popular accessories of childhood the Barbie doll to explain key aspects of cultural meaning. Some readings would see Barbie as reproducing ethnicity and gender in a particularly coarse and damaging way - a cultural icon of racism and sexism. Rogers develops a broader more challenging picture. She shows how the cultural meaning of Barbie is more ambiguous than the narrow appearance-dominated model that is attributed to the doll. For a start Barbie′s sexual identity is not clear-cut. Similarly her class situation is ambiguous. But all interpretations agree that with her enormous range of lifestyle `accessories′ Barbie exists to consume. Her body is the perfect metaphor of modern times: plastic st