In 2019 Barbie turns 60. Never only a toy, she defines the stellar. In Plastic's Republic, Giovanna Riccio delves into Barbie's impact on female beauty highlighting how plasticity in body and persona have allowed the doll to remain top-diva. Other poems bring to life, Mattel's movers-n-shakers who created Barbie to be their in-house money maker. Riccio's Plastications lyrics illustrate how Barbie's mouldable nature lets Mattel position their high achiever as ever-relevant, arguably, by exploiting social trends, political movements and historical events. In the Human Barbies section, Barbie becomes plastic surgery's prophet, spawning "plastic-positive" people who see their bodies as raw material suitable for actual and virtual surgical "doctoring." Riccio's witty, inimitable poems portray Barbie as a complex, contradictory global celebrity, but also explore the philosophical, feminist and body-image issues that this plastic goddess engenders.

Giovanna Riccio is a graduate of the University of Toronto where she studied philosophy. Her poems have appeared in national and international journals and magazines as well as numerous anthologies. Translations of her poems have been published in Italian, French and Romanian. She is the author of Vittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press, 2010) and Strong Bread (Quattro Books, 2011).

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