Journal articles on the topic 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn'

This paper will situate the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD), within the context of the Western esoteric tradition. It will explore how the GD uses symbolism and ritual for self-development. To assess the GD as a system of transpersonal development it will be evaluated against transpersonal theory, particularly that of Ken Wilber. It may be useful for the reader to understand the affiliations of the authors: the first author is a member of the GD, the second is a psychologist with an interest in the transpersonal but is not affiliated to any esoteric order.

While Bruno and Louise Huber were developing their Astrological Psychology, they assisted with the foundation of the Arcane School in Geneva and worked for three years with Roberto Assagioli at his Psychosynthesis Institute in Florence. Their non-predictive method blends astrology with psychosynthesis as a way to self-realization that resembles the pillars of ascent of Kabbalah and Neoplatonism. Like Jung, Assagioli concealed his esoteric interests to preserve his professional reputation, and Huber astrologers do not usually class themselves as magicians. Nevertheless their engagement with the evolution of the will through the shifting borders of the mind and its memories by way of learning triangles in the Natal Chart, as well as Moon Node Astrology, is similar to the use of celestial magic as a way to self-empowerment practised by members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This paper will examine the Hubers’ astrology within the context of Neoplatonic, Kabbalistic and magical philosophy.

Abstract Despite the centrality of the concept of God in Christian theology and Western philosophy for over two millennia, little attention has been given the concept of God in twentieth-century occultism in general, and in the writings of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) in particular. In this article it is argued that Crowley’s multifaceted and sometimes conflicting approaches to God, are dependent on five main factors: (1) his childhood experiences of Christianity in the form of the Plymouth Brethren, (2) the impact of Empirical Scepticism and Comparative Religion, (3) the emanationist concept of God that he encountered through his membership in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, (4) the revelation of The Book of the Law and the claim of being a Prophet, The Great Beast 666, of a New Age, and finally (5) solar-phallicism as expressed through the Ordo Templi Orientis. These apparently contradictory strands in Crowley’s biography and intellectual armoury are in fact interlinked, and it is by studying them together that it is possible to identify the concept of God in Crowley’s magical writings.

Relatively little critical attention has been paid to Charles Williams’s ten year involvement in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (F.R.C.), despite the possibilities for interpretation of the often obscure imagery derived from this experience and applied to his novels and poetry. This paper reviews the F.R.C.’s rituals and meeting minutes in order to gauge the level of Williams’s involvement with the FR.C. and the mystical concepts communicated by its founder, Arthur Edward Waite. It also explores the order’s organizational, symbolic and philosophical roots, particularly the links shared with its parent order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Having identified the historical and experiential contexts of Williams’s F.R.C. participation, the paper offers examples of the possibilities for interpretation created by greater awareness of the order’s ideas and practices. A number of Williams’s novels are explored in light of several occult concepts important to the F.R.C.—the ‘middle pillar’, the ‘higher self’, and the ‘end of desire’. This analysis indicates that comprehensive interpretation of Williams’s fiction and poetry is impossible without a thorough understanding of the ideas and symbols that he encountered in his ritual experiences. This analysis also demonstrates the importance of the modern occult context to Williams’s life and work.

The article gives the first extensive review of the multivolume ‘Hermetic Library.’ It is stored in the Research Division of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library. This collection includes translations from European authors from Ancient Greece to the 18th century. Some manuscripts of the ‘Hermetic Library’ collection were believed by the Order of the Golden and Pink Cross to belong to the legendary Rosicrucians. The Order of the Golden and Pink Cross emerged in the 18th century within the Masonic movement. Until early 19th century the Order, mostly focused on alchemy, developed as a branch of Freemasonry. In 1782 the Order of the Golden and Pink Cross opened its subdivision in Russia. Having survived a number of prohibitions, the organization of Russian Rosicrucians continued until early 20th century. The ‘Hermetic Library’ is the largest literary heritage of Russian Rosicrucians. The ‘Hermetic Library’ was started by educator and book publisher N. I. Novikov in early 19th century. It was Europe’s largest collection of alchemical and Rosicrucian works of the time. The library was to be kept secret and be used for education of the Order members. Two collections of the library fell into hands of different groups of Rosicrucians. The Moscow collection was kept in Arsenyev's family. The Petersburg collection passed from hand to hand; in late 19th century it was put up for sale. Only after 1917 the two collections of the ‘Hermetic Library’ were acquired by libraries of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The study of the St. Petersburg collection shows that it was copied and translated by several Rosicrucians. After Novikov’s death in 1818, two different groups continued the library, and volumes following the 30th differ in content and design. Novikov’s library included manuscripts on the development of alchemy from Ancient Egypt and to 18th century Europe. They included the most important Rosicrucian works. 35 volumes of the St. Petersburg collection include 191 works. The volumes were compiled to insure consistent training of the Order adepts. The article analyses the St. Petersburg collection of the ‘Hermetic library.’ Within the frameworks of an article it is impossible to review the contents every volume. It offers a summary of the history of writing and storage of the library until the 20th century and an overview of the volumes’ design and layout, which allows to judge the overall design of the library. It also compares the St. Petersburg collection and the Moscow one.

The economic and sociopolitical factors related to the current Greek crisis are translated into intrapsychic and interpersonal mechanisms in order to explain the political phenomenon of Golden Dawn. I draw on psychoanalytic concepts to reflect on how the crisis has functioned as a mechanism for the production and control of individual and collective subjectivities. I argue that the crisis has created immense insecurity and has fuelled feelings of desperation, fear and anger. For some, these feelings have been displaced onto a substitute reality offered by a transcendent group represented by Golden Dawn; personal boundaries have loosened, and subjectivities have been absorbed by a large, collective “false self”. At the centre of the notion of this substitute reality is the fantasy of omnipotence, channelled through the mechanism of projection onto the leader of the group. History is used and misused in order to cement the psychic life of the group and as a compensatory mechanism for the felt national shame. Moreover, collective denigration, or even extinction, of immigrants serves to displace negative feelings and impulses onto the “other”. I borrow Freud’s contention that when evil is not condemned, raw and wild impulses are let loose –hence, the assassination of a leftwing rapper that has landed Golden Dawn in court.

In the years 2004-2006 in Kraków, phenological observations of climbing roses were conducted in order to determine the length and dates of their flowering period. The diameters of their flowers were also compared. Eight flowering repeating cultivars were selected for the experiment: 'Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison', 'Dortmund', 'Golden Showers', 'Goldstern', 'New Dawn', 'Parade', 'Sympathie' and 'White New Dawn'. During the studies, the shrub roses were not artificially watered in order to create conditions similar to those prevailing in public green areas. It was observed that irrespective of the air temperature pattern in a given year, the studied cultivars did not bloom before 15 June. In 2006 high temperatures (above 20^oC), which continued throughout the whole flowering period, caused its shortening, and the interval between the first and the next flowering in the season lasted longer than in the previous years. In the years 2004-2006, the cultivar 'New Dawn' bloomed the longest. In 2005 the studied cultivars produced larger flowers than the next year. The cultivars 'Dortmund' and 'White New Dawn' were characterised by the smallest diameter of flowers, whereas 'Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison', 'Golden Showers' and 'Parade' were marked by the largest diameter.

William Butler Yeats appears to have begun his study of astrology even before he joined the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn in 1890. His earliest surviving astrological manuscripts date to 1888 or 1889, when he was in his early twenties; they record planetary elements and symbols in elementary lessons, probably undertaken among Madame Blavatsky’s theosophists. For the 1890s, his manuscripts show more emphasis on readings of tarot cards than on astrological predictions, although the tarot lay-outs are occasionally accompanied by horary charts drawn up for the moment of the reading. Yeats’s use of traditional astrology became much more extensive and precise during the Edwardian years, particularly in 1908, when he was using several different notebooks for astrological calculations. Notebooks survive much better than loose sheets, of course, and another, from 1934, preserves what seem to be the latest surviving horoscopes drawn up by Yeats himself, including his own secondary progressions for the following year; they appear to have been cast in September or October, about the time Virginia Woolf noted Yeats’s conversation about the occult in her diary: ‘He believes entirely in horoscopes. Will never do business with anyone without having their horoscopes.

AbstractShoals of golden shiners (Notemigonus crysoleucas) often swim along the perimeter of their large indoor tank at dawn and dusk, and can also be trained to anticipate food arrival by swimming directly towards the food source at midday. In this study all golden shiners in six shoals of 8-12 fish were individually marked with a visible implant elastomer, and shoal movement was video taped in order to determine whether some individuals consistently occupied front positions even when all shoal members were of similar size and experience. There were significant correlations between all three times of day (dawn, midday, dusk) in the mean position (from 1 = first at the front of the shoal to 12 = last at the back) occupied by each fish. In each shoal, 1-3 fish were leaders: all three daily times combined, they had more than twice the occupancy rate of the front two or three positions as expected from chance. In subsequent boldness tests there was a tendency (p = 0.096) for these leaders to pass through dark U-shaped tubes more readily than non-leaders. However, after being dipnetted and transferred to a refuge, leaders did not emerge earlier than non-leaders. Individual tendencies to lead may have been underlain by a motivation to feed (which may differ even in fish of similar size and experience) or by intrinsic mobility. On the other hand, a link between leadership and risk-taking remains to be established for captive golden shiners.

Pulling out the recession and organizing the post oil era : laying dawn political conditions. Having experienced the golden days of the oil era without having paved the way for the development of a longlasting economic growth, the Cameroonian economy strongly receded since the mid 1980’s. Effective monetary adjustments aiming at economic rationality and the achievement of macro-economic balance in order to make economic growth come true, are part of the national and international environment. From that time, the internal problem has been to find out the various links between managers and the State allowing the passage from logics of distribution and rent-seeking to logics of production and accumulation. It is also the issue of Cameroon’s come back on the international stage.

This paper is an attempt to explore Yeats’s quest for order and how this quest found expression in his works. Throughout his life, Yeats was dissatisfied with the religious, artistic, political, anthropological and intellectual aspects of life, in both Ireland and England which have taken away from modern man the sense of order. His father's skepticism, his dissatisfaction with the spiritless religion of his time, a religion which seems dead and his sense of alienation at school among British students were behind his ceaseless search for alternative orders which became the preoccupation of all his life and triggered his [] engagements in numerous nationalistic, occult, and mystical societies which he joined early in his life. Among the societies he joined was the Balvatsky Lodge of the Russian lady Madam Balvatsky through which he came into close contact with the occult. One of the most important societies he joined and presided was the occult society the Golden Dawn. This paper, therefore, sheds light on his quest for nationalist, intellectual, philosophical, and mystical orders and how this is reflected in his poetry. The paper attempts to explore this quest for order selected poems such as "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", "The Second Coming", "Leda and the Swan", "Sailing to Byzantium" and some other poems together with reference to his philosophical book A Vision. However, the dominating quest in Yeats's poetry is his quest for a mystical order which can be traced in almost all his poetical works.

The Renaissance brought along with itself a multitude of reforms inspired by Humanism. Among them, the substantial change in the artistic precepts. Artists and poets progressively abandoned the strict allegorical and moralistic normative of medieval Christian aesthetics and went deep into the unexplored territory of a new poetic and rhetorical doctrine. Thanks to the Renaissance reading of Greco-Latin philosophers and grammarians, it is configured a first theory of modern art on a series of humanistic topics based on the classic Hellenistic aesthetics. One of the most prominent common places in this sense was the horatian ut pictura poesis topic, which inspired to the poets and artists in the Renaissance and Baroque a shared normative ruled by the mimesis, decorum, codes and imitative modes. The Spanish Golden Age writers and artists were not unaware of this fever, consisting in the systematical sisterhood of the arts beyond their possibilities and limits. Taking into account these issues, this paper analyzes the trace left by the poetic doctrine ut pictura poesis in the Habsburg Spain, in order to broaden our knowledge about the dawn of art theory in the Modern Age.

The article summarizes the results of studying of the biology of flowering varieties of climbing large-flowered roses (Large-Flowered Climber). The varietal composition of climbing large-flowered roses used for landscaping has not been sufficiently studied in terms of the biology of varieties and their ornamental qualities in the conditions of the Stavropol Upland. In this regard the research conducted by us in 2016-2019 are very actual. Studies are relevant, given the increased demand for roses with climbing type shoots for vertical gardening among landscape industry experts and amateur gardeners. In the collection of the Stavropol Botanical Garden, there are 21 varieties of climbing large-flowered roses from leading breeders of Germany, the USA, France, England, and Holland. Representatives of this garden group are varieties with a single flowering in the first half of summer, in which flowers are formed on biennial and older lateral shoots. It also includes varieties with repeated flowering, whose flowers are formed on shoots of different orders and ages, including the current year. The beginning of flowering of large large-flowered roses falls in the first half of June, the flowering period is June – July, August – September, October. The order of flowering of climbing large-flowered roses over the years is preserved. The varieties Krasnyy Mayak, Glenn Dale, Copper Glow are the first to bloom and bloom profusely, on average 20-25 days. Regular flowering was observed in the varieties: Handel, Ramira, Blossontime, Swan Lace, Sympathia, Santana, The Generous Gardener, New Dawn, Casino, Polca, Elfe, Rosarium Uetersen, Michka, Benvenuto, Heidelberg, Golden Climber, Golden Showers, Paul’s Scarlet Climber. The duration of flowering of climbing roses prone to permanent flowering capacity is more than 130 days. Roses of the Climber group have the ability to self-pollination, 14 varieties have abundant fruit formation, 7 varieties have a single one. The ability of varieties to tie fruits from free pollination makes it possible to use them as mother plants in rose breeding. Due to the diversity of flower colors, aroma, abundant continuous flowering, this garden group of roses has become one of the most promising for vertical gardening.

Abstract This study uncovers a link between sound patterns and ritualistic language in Charles Williams’ novels through an analysis of the relationship between type of sound and content. The study focuses on War in Heaven with a view to conducting a preliminary exploration into this link, and establishing possibilities for future research. Like Williams’ other novels, War in Heaven is saturated with the symbolism and ritual practices he learned in The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross and, potentially, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Williams’ experimentation with sound to convey his experience of ritual is explored through the framework of Roman Jakobson’s “Poetic Function”, to establish how Williams may have intended sound to contribute to the experience of the reader. Using a data driven approach, the study explores how sound patterns work with ritualistic content across War in Heaven, discovering a link between fricative sounds and ritualistic events.

Among modern practitioners of magic, the “psychologization of magic” has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888–1903). Approaching the Order’s teachings through the lens of contemporaneous literary discourse, the Irish poet and magician William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) attempted to consolidate supernaturalist and naturalist understandings of magic throughout the 1890s. In 1892, he made the concept of the “immortal moods” a key to both his poetry and his magical practice. Evoked through symbols in a ritual or a poem, these moods would descend “like a faint sigh into people’s minds” and move them to action, causing “all great changes in the world.” Yeats explored this concept in theoretical writings, poetic experiments, and his ritual practice, finding his own imagination entangled with past imaginations. Serving a brief term as the Golden Dawn’s Imperator and Instructor in Mystical Philosophy in 1901, he condensed the insights gained from this work in the doctrines of the “great mind and great memory.” Presenting a study of Yeats’ psychology of the universal mind, this article shows how his amalgamation of literary and folkloristic theorizing paved the way to connect magical and poetic practice to the emerging psychological discourse.

Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956) oli englantilainen okkultisti ja kuvataiteilija, joka kehitti uudenlaisen maagisen monogrammin luomisen tekniikan. Spare otti vaikutteita antiikista ja keskiajalta juontuvasta maagisten merkkien perinteestä, jonka keskeisiä tekstejä ovat olleet H. Cornelius Agrippan (1486–1535/1536) ja Giordiano Brunon (1548–1600) systemaattiset esitykset maagisista merkeistä. 1800-luvun lopun ja 1900-luvun alun Lontoossa Spareen puolestaan vaikuttivat uudet okkultistiset liikkeet, kuten Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Ordo Templi Orientis ja Aleister Crowleyn (1875–1947) perustama Argentium Astrum. Myöhemmin Sparen tekniikkaa on hyödynnetty erityisesti 1970-luvulla luodun kaaosmagian piirissä. Käsittelen artikkelissa maagisten merkkien perinnettä aseemisen kirjoituksen näkökulmasta. Aseeminen kirjoitus ei välitä luonnollisille kielille tyypillisiä konventionaalisia merkityksiä, mutta se välittää visuaalisia merkityksiä. Se näyttää kirjoitukselta, mutta sitä ei voi lukea luonnollisten kielten tavoin. Käsitteen ovat ottaneet käyttöön visuaaliset runoilijat Tim Gaze ja Jim Leftwich 1990-luvun puolivälissä kirjallisuuden kentällä. Spare painottaa teoksessaan The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy (1913), että maagista monogrammia luodessa pyritään siihen, ettei se sisällä visuaalista yhteyttä tekijän lauseeksi muotoilemaan tahtoon. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että Sparen järjestelmässä maagisen merkin luomisen prosessissa tavoitteena on muokata luettava teksti aseemiseksi. Sijoitan artikkelissa Sparen monogrammit osaksi maagisten merkkien historiaa ja kartoitan tästä näkökulmasta, millaisin tavoin ja millaisista syistä maagisten merkkien lukemista on vaikeutettu ja niistä on tehty aseemisia.

This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous further contexts, among them the late ancient *Greek Magical Papyri*, the Clavicula Salomonis tradition, Paracelsianism, Hermeticism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, theurgy, modern imagination techniques, as well as chaos ‘magic(k)’. As a consequence, Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience – as he frames his ritual diaries published online – reveals a strikingly entangled ritual that illustrates the breadth, depth, and complexity of Western learned magic, as well as its manifold entanglements across time and space. His diaries also demonstrate that, even while following largely formalistic premodern scripts of learned magic, contemporary practitioners may nonetheless display a high degree of flexibility, creativity, and innovation. The article closes by reflecting on whether it is likely that such strategies were also present in premodern practitioner scenarios. In doing so, it calls for taking the – extensive but hitherto almost completely neglected – data of experience reports by contemporary practitioners of ‘magic(k)’ into account when interpreting premodern sources of learned magic. As a consequence, this is the first systematic attempt to compare and juxtapose premodern and modern interpretations and mindsets of practitioners of learned magic. It is thus also the first scholarly article that aims at elucidating a premodern manual of learned magic through reading and analysing the experience report of a contemporary practitioner.

Across Europe, far-right groups balance between contradictory positions on gender equality, invoking women’s rights to claim European cultural superiority over imagined patriarchal Muslim immigrants while rejecting gender rights as threatening the nation. Using discourse analysis of online party media and parliamentary speeches, we explore intersections of gender and race in Greek neo-Nazi women’s public positioning towards gender equality, showing how these seemingly contradictory positions align well with the party’s political vision. At a moment of pervasive racist uses of feminist discourse (Farris 2017; Hark & Villa 2017), Golden Dawn women supported an antifeminist position that re-signifies ‘women’s rights’ as a racial issue, in order to construct political enemies and dismantle equality projects.  By representing gender violence  –  as in debates on the Istanbul Convention  –  as exclusively committed by the ‘non-white’‘Muslim’male, and by rejecting ‘artificially constructed’ equality rights in favor of ‘natural’ rights, they claimed Golden Dawn as the only political actor genuinely promoting women’s welfare.

South African politics has taken a different turn since the dawn of the democratic era in 1994. After 28 years of democracy, there has been some populists’ and constitutionalists’ tension in democratic South Africa. The Mandela and Mbeki presidencies are marked for constitutionalism, while the Zuma tenure of nine years is marked as the era of populism. The constitutional republic already experiences the tension between the politics of the populists and of the constitutionalists. This article aims to identify and analyse the concepts of populism and constitutionalism and invites public theology to dialogue with these political ideologies in order to bring harmonious coexistence in democratic South Africa. Through the literature study and latest press release statements, incidents and concepts were discovered to give definitions and the analyses of populism, constitutionalism, and public theology. Public theology is chosen against political theology, due to the emphasis of dialogue as a manner of making theological statements. It is realised that populists are full of charisma, and they use this to charm the masses, offering them promises of prosperity and peace, while in fact they regard themselves as the masses, as they are the sole representatives of the people. They carry the agenda of entitlement. On the other hand, the research finds that constitutionalists apply rationality to constitutional dictates in order to govern for democratic stability in society. They would like to see the state where the rule of law guarantees citizens’ safety and security and economic prosperity. By reading this article one finds that this research emphasises that public theology through its dialogical nature, prophetic calling, anthropological centricity, engaging methodology, is inherently missional in the politically chaotic world. As a discipline, public theology is intradisciplinary, therefore engages other theological fields, including natural and social disciplines in order to reinforce its missional character. The conclusion is that public theology should be at the forefront, inviting politicians from different spectrums and convictions to the table of dialogue. Dialogue paves the way towards understanding, synergy, and trust. Theo-political interactions are crucial towards justice formation, which builds societal harmony and peaceful coexistence. Political tensions in South Africa offer public theology a golden opportunity to assert itself in civil affairs, and makes its voice audible in the marketplace.Contribution: The interdisciplinary approach in this article contributes towards the importance of a relationship between the political studies and theology. Legal studies, history, and current affairs enrich the theological role in public affairs. Populism and constitutionalism are political ideologies in tension, and public theology through dialogue, contributes towards peaceful life in a democratic state.

I can remember setting up the dish, all the excitement of assembling it [...] and then putting the motor on. And in the late afternoon, you position the dish and kind of turn it, to find the right spot, and all of a sudden on this blank television screen there was an image that came on. And it was shocking knowing that this noise and this thing would be there, and begin to infiltrate – because I see it as an infiltration, I see it as invasion – I’m not mad on television, very choosy really about what I watch – and I see it as an invasion, and there was GWN as well as the ABC. I just thought ‘by golly, I’m in the process of brain-washing people to accept stuff without thinking about it, like consciously considering either side of any case’ [...] The one thing that protected you from having it on at all times was the need to put on the generator in order to power it. I felt a bit sad actually. (Savannah Kingston, Female, 55+ – name changed – homestead respondent) This paper addresses the huge communications changes that occurred over the past fifty years in outback Western Australia. (What happened in WA also has parallels with equivalent events in the Northern Territory, Queensland, in the larger properties in western New South Wales and northern South Australia.) Although the ‘coming of television’ – associated in remote areas with using a satellite dish to scan for the incoming signal – is typically associated with a major shift in community and cultural life, the evidence suggests that the advent of the telephone had an equivalent or greater impact in remote areas. With the introduction of the telephone, the homestead family no longer had to tune into (or scan) the radio frequencies to check on predicted weather conditions, to respond to emergencies, to engage in roll call or to hold a ‘public meeting’. As the scanning of the radio frequencies ended, so the scanning of the satellite signals began. As Sandstone resident Grant Coleridge (pseudonym, male, 40-54) said, only half ironically, “We got the telephone and the telly at the same time, so civilisation sort of hit altogether actually.” The scale and importance of changes to the technological communications infrastructure in remote WA within a single life-time spans pre-2-way radio to video livestock auctions by satellite. It comes as a surprise to most Australians that these changes have occurred in the past generation. As recent viewers of the unexpectedly-successful Mongolian film The Story of the Weeping Camel (2004) would know, one of the themes of the Oscar-nominated movie is the coming of television and its impact upon a traditional rural life. The comparative availability of television outside the rural areas of Mongolia – and its attraction to, particularly, the younger family members in the Weeping Camel household – is a motif that is explored throughout the narrative, with an unspoken question about the price to be paid for including television in the cultural mix. It’s easy to construct this story as a fable about the ‘exotic other’, but the same theme was played out comparatively recently in remote Western Australia, where the domestic satellite service AUSSAT first made television an affordable option just under twenty years ago. This paper is about the people in remote Western Australia who started scanning for the satellite signal in 1986, and stopped scanning for the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) 2-way radio phone messages at about the same time. Savannah Kingston (name changed), who in 1989 generously agreed to an in-depth interview discussing the impact of satellite broadcasting upon her outback life, was a matriarch on a rural property with four grown children. She had clear views upon ways in which life had changed dramatically in the generation before the satellite allowed the scanning of the television signal. Her recollection of the weft and warp of the tapestry of life in outback WA started thirty-five years previously, with her arrival on the station as a young wife: When I went there [mid-1950s], we had a cook and we ate in the dining room. The cook and anyone who worked in the house ate in the kitchen and the men outside ate in the outside. So, with the progress of labour away from the bush, and the cost of labour becoming [prohibitive] for a lot of people, we got down to having governesses or house-girls. If the house-girls were white, they ate at the table with us and the governesses ate with us. If the house-girls were Aboriginal, they didn’t like eating with us, and they preferred to eat in the kitchen. The kids ate with them. Which wasn’t a good idea because two of my children have good manners and two of them have appalling manners. The availability of domestic help supported a culture of hospitality reminiscent of British between-the-wars country house parties, recreated in Agatha Christie novels and historically-based films such as The Remains of the Day (1993): In those early days, we still had lots of visitors [...] People visited a lot and stayed, so that you had people coming to stay for maybe two or three days, five days, a week, two weeks at a time and that required a lot of organisation. [int:] WHERE DID YOUR VISITORS COME FROM? City, or from the Eastern states, occasionally from overseas. [Int:] WOULD THEY BE RELATIVES? Sometimes relatives, friends or someone passing through who’d been, you know, someone would say ‘do visit’ and they’d say ‘they’d love to see you’. But it was lovely, it was good. It’s a way of learning what’s going on. (Savannah Kingston.) The ‘exotic other’ of the fabled hospitality of station life obscures the fact that visitors from the towns, cities and overseas were a major source of news and information in a society where radio broadcasts were unpredictable and there was no post or newspaper delivery. Visitors were supplemented by a busy calendar of social events that tied together a community of settlements in gymkhanas, cricket fixtures and golf tournaments (on a dirt course). Shifts in the communications environment – the introduction of television and telephone – followed a generation of social change witnessing the metamorphosis of the homestead from the hub of a gentrified lifestyle (with servants, governesses, polo and weekends away) to compact, efficient business-units, usually run by a skeleton staff with labour hired in at the peak times of year. Over the years between the 1960s-1980s isolation became a growing problem. Once Indigenous people won the fight for award-rate wages their (essentially) unpaid labour could no longer support the lifestyle of the station owners and the absence of support staff constrained opportunities for socialising off the property, and entertaining on it, and the communication environment became progressively poorer. Life on the homestead was conceived of as being more fragile than that in the city, and more economically vulnerable to a poor harvest or calamities such as wildfire. The differences wrought by the introduction of newer communication technologies were acknowledged by those in the country, but there was a clear resistance to city-dwellers constructing the changes as an attack upon the romance of the outback lifestyle. When the then Communications Minister Tony Staley suggested in 1979 that a satellite could help “dispel the distance – mental as well as geographical – between urban and regional dwellers, between the haves and the have-nots in a communication society”, he was buying into a discourse of rural life which effectively disempowered those who lived in rural and remote areas. He was also ignoring the reality of a situation where the Australian outback was provided with satellite communication a decade after it was made available to Canadians, and where the king-maker in the story – Kerry Packer – stood to reap a financial windfall. There was a mythological dimension to Australia (finally) having a domestic satellite. Cameron Hazelhurst’s article on ‘The Dawn of the Satellite Era in Australia’ includes a colourful account of Kerry Packer’s explanation to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser of the capacity of domestic satellites to bring television, radio and telephone services to isolated communities in arctic Canada: And I [Packer] went and saw the Prime Minister and I explained to him my understanding of what was happening in those areas, and to his undying credit he grasped on to it immediately and said ‘Of course, it’s what we want. It’s exactly the sort of thing we need to stop the drift of people into urban areas. We can keep them informed. We can allow them to participate in whatever’s happening around the nation (Day 7, cited in Hazelhurst). Fraser here, as someone with experience of running a rural property in Victoria, propounds a pro-country rhetoric as a rationale for deployment of the satellite in terms of the Australian national policy agenda. (The desire of Packer to network his television stations and couple efficiency with reach is not addressed in this mythological reconstruction.) It is difficult, sometimes, to appreciate the level of isolation experienced on outback properties at the time. As Bryan Docker (male, 40-54), a resident of Broome at the time of the interviews, commented, “Telegrams, in those days, were the life-blood of the stations, through the Flying Doctor Service. But at certain times of the year the sun spots would interfere with the microwave links and we were still on morse from Broome to Derby during those periods.” Without reliable shortwave radio; with no television, newspapers or telephone; and with the demands of keeping the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) 2-way radio channel open for emergencies visitors were one of the ways in which station-dwellers could maintain an awareness of current events. Even at the time of the interviews, after the start of satellite broadcasting, I never travelled to an outback property without taking recent papers and offering to pick up post. (Many of the stations were over an hour’s journey from their nearest post office.) The RFDS 2-way radio service offered a social-lifeline as well as an emergency communication system: [Int:] DO YOU MISS THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE AT ALL? Yes, I do actually. It’s – I think it’s probably more lonely now because you used to switch it on and – you know if you’re here on your own like I am a lot – and you’d hear voices talking, and you used to know what everybody was doing – sort of all their dramas and all their [...] Now you don’t know anything that’s going on and unless somebody rings you, you don’t have that communication, where before you used to just hop over to another channel and have a chat [...] I think it is lonelier on the telephone because it costs so much to ring up. (Felicity Rohrer, female, 40-54, homestead.) Coupled with the lack of privacy of 2-way radio communication, and the lack of broadcasting, was the particular dynamic of a traditional station family. Schooled at home, and integrated within their homestead lifestyle, station children spent most of their formative years in the company of one or other of their parents (or, in previous decades, the station staff). This all changed at secondary school age when the children of station-owners and managers tended to be sent away to boarding school in the city. Exposure of the next generation to the ways of city life was seen as a necessary background to future business competence, but the transitions from ‘all’ to ‘next-to-nothing’ in terms of children’s integration within family life had a huge socio-emotional cost which was aggravated, until the introduction of the phone service, by the lack of private communication channels. Public Relations and news theory talk about the importance of the ‘environmental scan’ to understand how current events are going to impact upon a business and a family: for many years in outback Australia the environmental scan occurred when families got together (typically in the social and sporting rounds), on the RFDS radio broadcasts and ‘meetings’, in infrequent visits to the closest towns and through the giving and receiving of hospitality. Felicity Rohrer, who commented (above) about how she missed the RFDS had noted earlier in her interview: “It’s made a big difference, telephone. That was the most isolating thing, especially when your children were away at school or your parents are getting older [...] That was the worst thing, not having a phone.” Further, in terms of the economics of running a property, Troy Bowen (male, 25-39, homestead respondent) noted that the phone had made commercial life much easier: I can carry out business on the phone without anyone else hearing [...] On the radio you can’t do it, you more or less have to say ‘well, have you got it – over’. ‘Yeah – over’. ‘Well, I’ll take it – over’. That’s all you can do [...] Say if I was chasing something [...] the cheapest I might get it down to might be [...] $900. Well I can go to the next bloke and I can tell him I got it down to $850. If you can’t do any better than that, you miss out. ‘oh, yes, alright $849, that’s the best I can do.’ So I’ll say ‘alright, I’ll take it’. But how can you do that on the radio and say that your best quote is [$850] when the whole district knows that ‘no, it isn’t’. You can’t very well do it, can you? This dynamic occurs because, for many homestead families prior to the telephone, the RFDS broadcasts were continuously monitored by the women of the station as a way of keeping a finger on the pulse of the community. Even – sometimes, especially – when they were not part of the on-air conversation, the broadcast could be received for as far as reception was possible. The introduction of the phone led to a new level of privacy, particularly appreciated by parents who had children away at school, but also introduced new problems. Fran Coleridge, (female, 40-54, Sandstone) predicted that: The phone will lead to isolation. There’s an old lady down here, she’s about 80, and she housekeeps for her brother and she’s still wearing – her mother died 50 years ago – but she’s still wearing her clothes. She is so encapsulated in her life. And she used to have her [RFDS] transceiver. Any time, Myrtle would know anything that’s going on. Anything. Birthday party at [local station], she’d know about it. She knew everything. Because she used to have the transceiver on all the time. And now there’s hardly any people on, and she’s a poor little old lonely lady that doesn’t hear anything now. Can you see that? Given the nuances of the introduction of the telephone (and the loss of the RFDS 2-way), what was the perceived impact of satellite broadcasting? Savannah Kingston again: Where previously we might have sat around the table and talked about things – at least the kids and I would – with television there is now more of a habit of coming in, showering and changing for dinner, putting on the motor and the men go and sit in front of the television during [...] six o’clock onwards, news programs and whatnot and um, I find myself still in the kitchen, getting the meal and then whoever was going to eat it, wanting to watch whatever was on the television. So it changed quite appreciably. Felicity Rohrer agrees: [Int:] DO YOU THINK THERE HAVE BEEN CHANGES IN THE TIME THAT YOU SPEND WITH EACH OTHER? Yes, I think so. They [the homestead household] come home and they – we all sit down here and look at the news and have a drink before tea whereas people used to be off doing their own tea. [Int] SO YOU THINK IT’S INCREASED THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU SPEND TOGETHER? Yes, I think so – well, as a family. They all try and be home by 6 to see the [GWN] news. If they miss that, we look at the 7 o’clock [ABC], but they like the Golden West because it’s got country news in it. But the realities of everyday life, as experienced in domestic contexts, are sometimes ignored by commentators and analysts, except insofar as they are raised by interviewees. Thus the advent of the satellite might have made Savannah Kingston feel “a bit sad actually”, but it had its compensations: It was definitely a bit of a peace-maker. It sort of meant there wasn’t the stress that we had previously when going through [...] at least people sitting and watching something, you’re not so likely to get into arguments or [...] It definitely had value there. In fact, when I think about it, that might be one of its major applications, ’cos a lot of men in the bush tend to come in – if they drink to excess they start drinking in the evening, and that can make for very uncomfortable company. For film-makers like the Weeping Camel crew – and for audiences and readers of historical accounts of life in outback Australia – the changes heralded by the end of scanning the RFDS channels, and the start of scanning for satellite channels, may seem like the end of an era. In some ways the rhythms of broadcasting helped to homogenise life in the country with life in the city. For many families in remote homes, as well as the metropolis, the evening news became a cue for the domestic rituals of ‘after work’. A superficial evaluation of communications changes might lead to a consideration of how some areas of life were threatened by improved broadcasting, while others were strengthened, and how some of the uniqueness of a lifestyle had been compromised by an absorption into the communication patterns of urban life. It is unwise for commentators to construct the pre-television past as an uncomplicated romantic prior-time, however. Interviews with those who live such changes as their reality become a more revealing indicator of the nuances and complexities of communications environments than a quick scan from the perspective of the city-dweller. References Day, C. “Packer: The Man and the Message.” The Video Age (February 1983): 7 (cited in Hazelhurst). Hazelhurst, Cameron. “The Dawn of the Satellite Era.” Media Information Australia 58 (November 1990): 9-22. Staley, Tony. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates. Canberra: House of Representatives Hansard (18 October 1979): 2225, 2228-9. The Remains of the Day. 1993. The Story of the Weeping Camel. Thinkfilm and National Geographic, 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia. "Scanning the Satellite Signal in Remote Western Australia." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/01-green.php>. APA Style Green, L. (Aug. 2005) "Scanning the Satellite Signal in Remote Western Australia," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/01-green.php>.

“We girls can do anything, right, Barbie?” — Barbie advertising slogan, 1985 Introduction Barbie, throughout her sixty-five year history, has both influenced and reflected western ideas of femininity. To quote M.G. Lord: “Barbie has both shaped and responded to the marketplace, it’s possible to study her as a reflection of American popular cultural values and notions of femininity. Her houses, and friends and clothes provide a window onto the often contradictory demands that the culture has placed upon women” (Lord, 7). Not only does Barbie reflect the contradictory demands and ideals placed on women, as Lord points out, but Barbie has also generated contradictory ideas and analyses. This article considers Barbie and her construction of hyper-femininity in relation to feminist debates, utilising Critical Femininities and queer theory to seek out new meanings for Barbie. It is worth noting that this article discusses Barbie as a figure and cultural construct, both in relation to the Barbie doll line as well as the 2023 film Barbie. I’m a Barbie Girl In the throes of 2020’s COVID lockdown I found joy in an unexpected source: Barbie. Like many, Barbie had a pink-tinted presence in my childhood, with her shiny blonde hair, permanently arched feet, and in place of genitals, flesh coloured plastic underwear embossed with tiny raised letter Bs which I would rub my fingers over. I would dress my Barbies up in whatever tiny clothes I could get my hands on, my tape of Aqua’s Barbie Girl on repeat. My mum once bought me a Bratz doll, whose oversized lips and Y2K fashions couldn’t eclipse Barbie. Bratz dolls felt like the girls in school who would bully me, whilst Barbie felt like a woman I could aspire to be, with her dream house, multitude of careers, and parade of pets. In my heart, Barbie was supreme. However, as my childhood Barbies eventually scattered to various charity shops and storage bins in the attic, my adult life became devoid of tiny plastic heels and hairbrushes. That is, until 2020. Stuck indoors, on furlough from a retail job I despised, and considering applying for PhD programs but struggling to string together my proposal, I saw her. Celebrating Barbie’s 60th Birthday: Proudly Pink Barbie™. She appears drenched in pink, her pink hair styled into a high ponytail permanently gelled into a satisfying swoop at the end; attached to her pink peplum top sits a rhinestone broach which reads “Barbie”. The Barbie monogram also appears printed on her hot pink pencil skirt and matching pink quilted bag, which sits in the crook of her pink gloved arms. Whilst modern Barbies’ gaze looks straight forward to look kindly upon their owners, Proudly Pink Barbie™ is based on the sculpt of the original 1959 Barbie. As such, her blue eye-shadowed cat-eyed gaze is cast permanently downwards and to the side, her glossed pink lips pouting instead of smiling. Proudly Pink Barbie™ does not perform happiness for the viewer, instead her sidewards glance reads as ennui. It’s as if she knew that in my lockdown solitude I had grown accustomed to wearing Juicy Couture sweatpants and no make up, and she judged me heavily for it. Proudly Pink Barbie™ will always be a better hyper-femme than me, and I’m at peace with that. Proudly Pink Barbie™ sits perfectly on my living room shelf with her Barbie pals who have joined her over recent years, a cluster of ballgowns, tiny lingerie, striped swimsuits, and a once winking cowgirl whose broken eyes have been fixed. A reminder of the possibilities of hyper-femininity in all its fun, performative, camp, joyous, and powerful forms. My most recent Barbie stands out of her box on the shelf with her new peers, she is Margot Robbie Barbie in her pink cowgirl outfit. The Multiplicities of Barbie and Her Complicated Relationship to Feminism Barbie’s (2023) opening monologue reflects on Barbie’s history and the multiplicity of Barbie: yes, Barbie changed everything. Then, she changed it all again. All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women. She might have started out as just a lady in a bathing suit, but she became so much more. She has her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career. Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything. And this has been reflected back onto the little girls of today in the real world. Girls have grown into women who can achieve everything and anything they set their mind to. Thanks to Barbie all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved, at least that’s what the Barbies think. (Gerwig) Whilst ironic in tone, it does consider how Barbie can act as a conduit for empowerment. The multiplicity of Barbie, with her endless careers and multiple houses, friends, and methods of transport, leads to a cacophony of opportunities for play. However, the boundless opportunities and room for creativity within Barbie’s world do not often extend to Barbie’s idea of femininity. Barbie can be everything, but she is very rarely seen without her plastic heels and pink branding. Barbie’s careers are often in flux, but her gendered identity seemingly fits perfectly within her pink box. Whilst it could be, and has been, argued that Barbie’s construction of femininity is limiting, it could also be simultaneously true that Barbie’s hyper-femininity is in itself a feminist statement. The first Barbie doll debuted a few years before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, calling attention to “the problem that has no name” (Friedan, 5): the widespread unhappiness of women forced into hegemonic feminine roles with limited opportunities for women in the workforce. Whilst feminine in her appearance, Barbie defied patriarchal roles with her actions. Barbie in her early years allowed young girls and children to dream that they could work any career they wished, even in what was seen as more masculine positions such as astronauts and doctors, could own their own homes without needing to be married, and did not need to sacrifice their femininity in order to succeed. To Barbie, femininity knows no bounds. To many, however, Barbie’s construction of femininity is perceived as limiting and disempowering. Barbie has been a site for feminist discourse since she made her debut. In 1972, NOW (The National Organisation for Women) staged a protest outside a toy fair in New York, handing out leaflets which stated that “'fashion' dolls such as Barbie, Dawn and Chrissy perpetuated sexual stereotypes by encouraging little girls to see themselves solely as mannequins, sex objects or housekeepers” (New York Times). Meanwhile, Natasha Walter links the pink-ification of girls' toys such as Barbie to what she sees as the auto-objectification of women, claiming that women are modelling themselves on the dolls they were brought up with. Walter argues that the limiting ideals of femininity as portrayed in dolls such as Barbie both echo and endorse the western feminine beauty standard of cis-gendered, white, skinny, able-bodied, and blonde. Barbie’s caricature of femininity has had an impact on women, as many strive to attain her almost impossible standard of beauty; according to Walter this should not be viewed as an act of empowerment, but rather as giving in to patriarchal ideals. Whilst many, such as Walter, have argued that Barbie’s construction of femininity has both historically and in recent years been limited in its beauty standards, the notion of Barbie as white, blonde, able-bodied, and thin is not entirely representative of the true diversity of Barbie. Throughout Barbie’s history, Mattel has attempted to diversify both Barbie herself and her line-up of friends; however, these attempts have made a complicated impact, with Mattel at times arguably falling short of truly instilling inclusivity into Barbie. In 1967, Mattel launched Coloured Francie, a darker-complexioned version of their Francie doll. Coloured Francie was Mattel’s first none-white doll in their Barbie line; however, Mattel faced criticism for utilising the same face mold as her caucasian counterpart. A year later Mattel released Christie, their first doll with a face mold based on African American features, whilst in 1980 Mattel released African American and Hispanic Barbie dolls, officially expanding Barbie from being solely white. Since then Barbie has been an array of multiple ethnicities and races. In recent years, Mattel has also expanded her once limiting beauty standard further by introducing dolls such as a ‘curvy’ Barbie in 2016, Barbies with prosthetic limbs and hearing aids in 2018, and a Barbie with Down syndrome in 2023. However, Mattel's forays into introducing dolls of different body types and disabilities have not always succeeded. Seven years after the introduction of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, Mattel realised “Share a Smile Becky”, a friend of Barbie's who came in a hot pink wheelchair. However, Mattel’s first disabled doll was quickly discontinued after consumers realised that Becky was unable to access Barbie’s dream house and accessories. Despite Mattel’s at times arguably apathetic attempts to diversify Barbie, the cultural notion of Barbie has remained that of white, thin, blonde, and able-bodied. We can see this reflected in the casting of the film Barbie itself: despite a diverse cast of Barbies, our protagonist “stereotypical” Barbie is played by white, thin, blonde, and able-bodied actress Margot Robbie, who describes herself to Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie: "I’m Stereotypical Barbie. I’m like the Barbie you think of when someone says, ‘Think of a Barbie.’ That’s me” (Gerwig). As Stereotypical Barbie herself states, despite there now being a cacophony of Barbies available, to many our cultural idea of Barbie remains blonde, white, thin, and able-bodied. If we are to view Barbie as a pink-tinted reflection of western ideas of femininity, it is no surprise then that Barbie’s beauty standards and our cultural idea of Barbie’s standard of feminine beauty mirrors western beauty standards. However, through reanalysing Barbie’s construction of unbridled hyper-femininity through a lens of Critical Femininities perhaps we can also allow space for readings of Barbie as a site for empowerment, subversion, and joy. Hoskin and Blair describe Critical Femininities as “moving beyond femininity as a patriarchal tool” (Hoskin and Blair, 1): challenging assumptions that femininity is inherently subordinate and a source of disempowerment, they argue instead for “alternative readings of femininity that are both intersectional and liberating” (Hoskin and Blair, 5). Viewing Barbie through a lens of Critical Femininities allows us to see her pink-hued hyper-feminine aesthetics as a representation of high-femme joy, in all her tiny plastic high-heeled, exaggeratedly vibrant make-up, and frilly costumed glory. Whilst many feminist critiques of Barbie raise valid concerns, I would argue that simultaneously if we are to view Barbie’s hyper-femininity as a site for joyous gender expression, instead of as a purely patriarchal tool, we can see the true strength in Barbie’s pink-saturated femininity. By acknowledging the complications and multiplicities of Barbie and allowing space for her to be seen outside of the binary of bad/good feminist, for multiple meanings to coexist perhaps we can seek out new possibilities for Barbie. “The Epitome of Stupidity and Glamour”: Queer Co-option of Barbie Another key notion we can utilise in seeking out new possibilities for Barbie is to seek to liberate her from Mattel’s enforced heteronormativity. What is overtly lacking from the Barbie movie as well as many feminist texts on Barbie is her radical ability to act as a conduit for joyous and subversive queer readings. Whilst Barbie as a product manufactured by Mattel has both historically and recently been limited in her construction of femininity, with her largely depicted as skinny, white, and blonde, Barbie as an idea, as a shorthand for the endless possibilities of hyper-femininity and gender play, is so much more. Erica Rand argues that Mattel’s branding and creation of Barbie perpetuates hegemonic ideas of femininity and heterosexuality, and enforces western beauty standards; however, consumers of Barbie can deviate from Mattel’s demands. Rand highlights how Barbie can be used as a tool to subvert the very values and beauty standards she represents, with consumers creating their own queer, butch, cross-dressing, and dyke Barbies who break the hegemonic and heterosexual mold enforced by Mattel. Rand states that consumers often took out much of what Mattel put in. But, equally as often, they took out less and added more themselves than common wisdom would suggest. They gave Barbie queer accessories, and they acted as Barbie’s queer accessories to the crime of abetting her escape from the straight context of meaning that Mattel spent millions of dollars to give her. (Rand, 194) A recent example of the queer co-option of Barbie is drag queen Trixie Mattel. Adopting Mattel as her performance surname, Mattel has utilised Barbie as inspiration for much of her drag persona. Mattel’s exaggerated make up and usage of Barbie fashions as a site of inspiration for her drag looks, such as Golden Dreams Barbie, Winking Western Barbie, and Workin’ Out Barbie, form a queer parody of Barbie which reclaims and subverts Mattel’s (the brand’s) intentions. As well as utilising Barbie as a conduit for drag parody, Mattel is also an avid collector of Barbie and creates YouTube content to present her collection and discuss Barbie history with her audience. Her YouTube series Trixie’s Decades of Dolls sees Mattel discuss key Barbies from the 1960s to 1990s, where Mattel revels in the ridiculous, groundbreaking and consistently high-femme eras of Barbie. Mattel draws attention to moments where Barbie reflects and influences women’s history, as well as calling attention to the impractical, camp, and ridiculous nature of the designs of Barbie over the years. She describes 1990’s Holiday Barbie this way: “I mean nothing is more ridiculous than this gown, and there’s this big floating bang, with blue eye makeup plastered in circles on an orange base. The epitome of stupidity and glamour” (Mattel). It is clear that Mattel utilises Barbie as a site of personal joy. Mattel serves as a – to quote Rand – “queer accessory to Barbie”, utilising drag to parody and reclaim Barbie as well as utilising her YouTube content to publish her queer readings of Barbie. Mattel’s exaggerated performance of Barbie-inspired hyper-femininity both celebrates Barbie’s legacy and destabilises aspects of Barbie that fall more within patriarchal, normative, and heteronormative spheres. Mattel stands as an example for how Barbie and her complicated representations of femininity can be utilised as a source of empowerment and joy. Over the course of my research, I have been thinking about my own relationship to Barbie as a queer femme woman, and the legacy that each Barbie that I once held in my chubby childhood fingers, or now place on my living room shelf, has had. Rediscovering Barbie at the age of 26 reaffirmed and set ablaze a core and unwavering belief of mine: that femininity can be fun. I look at my Barbies lined up on my shelf: a parade of hyper-femininities, they call out to me to be as fun as them, as pink, as bright, as bold, as ridiculous. My Barbies show me that femininity can be subversive. That I can express my gender identity through dress-up. That I can love and embrace the colour pink and saturate my life and myself with pink, as an act of joy and gender expression, not as a sign that I’ve given in to patriarchal demands. Barbie means to me the power of hyper-femininity and the endless room for possibilities and multitudes it holds. Fig. 1: Self-portrait with Barbies, 2023. Conclusion Whilst Barbie may be seen as an unrealistic ideal, her construction of exaggerated hyper-femininity has for many served as a conduit for femme self-expression. In her biography Doll Parts, transgender model and performer Amanda Lepore describes how her childhood Barbie dolls were “everything I wanted to be, before I even knew what I wanted” (Lepore, 4). For generations of women, queer people, and femmes alike, Barbie has been a friend, a confidant, a muse: a plastic sculpted figure who sparked within us a desire to explore and play with our own relationships with gender and femininity. Through we are arguably yet to see an out queer Barbie on our shelves and our screens – although Mattel has released in recent years a series of Inspiring Women Barbie dolls, some of which depict LGBTQ+ women, including actress Laverne Cox – I would like to end by briefly focussing on the queer subtext in Barbie’s ending. We see Barbie leave Barbieland with her creator, Ruth Handler – played by Rhea Perlman – and decide that she wants to no longer be an idea, but instead to be a human: “ I want to do the imagining, I don’t wanna be the idea” (Gerwig). Barbie’s journey through the conflicting push and pull of patriarchy and feminism has led to her longing for subjecthood. Ultimately, Barbie realises that she does not need permission from her creator to be human, she can simply “discover I am”. Barbie’s self-discovery and leap into humanity, transforming from a thing that is made to a woman, reflects many queer people’s journeys in realising that they do not need permission to live their authentic lives. Barbie’s ending serves as an ode to those who stepped into the unknown and embraced the multitude of possibilities available to them. “Take my hands. Now, close your eyes. Now feel.” References Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. London: Penguin Classics, 1963. Gerwig, Greta, dir. Barbie. Warner Bros Pictures, 2023. Hoskin, Rhea Ashley, and Karen L. Blair. “Critical Femininities: A ‘New’ Approach to Gender Theory.” Psychology & Sexuality 13.1 (2022): 1-8. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19419899.2021.1905052>. Lepore, Amanda. Doll Parts. New York: Regan Arts, 2017. Lord, M.G. Forever Barbie: The Unauthorised Biography of a Real Doll. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Mattel, Trixie. Trixie’s Decades of Dolls: The 90s. 2020. 11 Apr. 2024 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJh4fF4RE>. Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. Duke UP, 1995. New York Times. "Feminists Protest 'Sexist' Toys in Fair." 29 Feb. 1972. 11 Apr. 2023 <https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/29/archives/feminists-protest-sexist-toys-in-fair.html>. Walter, Natasha. Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. London: Virago, 2010.