1939 New York World's Fair
A01=Isabelle Held
Atomic Age
Author_Isabelle Held
Big Science
body contouring design
Brassiere
breast implant
Category=AKT
Category=AKTF
Category=JBSF
Category=PDX
community
cosmetic surgery
design
domesticity
DuPont
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
eugenics
falsies
fashion
FDA
feminine body
feminist
gender
harm reduction
Hollywood
hosiery
interior design
materiality
Materials
Medical Device Regulation Act
military intelligence
nylon
padding
pin-up girl
polyurethane
prosthetics
public relations
queer
Robert Alan Franklyn
San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition
self-fashioning
sex work
silicone injections
skin color
standardization
Surgifoam
synthetic fiber
synthetics
technology
technology transfer
The Test Tube Girl
touch
trans feminine
underwear
wartime technology
World World of Science
Product details
- ISBN 9781478033103
- Weight: 522g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Feb 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells, Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter domestic use by following plastics on their journey into women’s bodies. Held explores the effects of military-industrial science and the emergence of nylon, silicone, and plastic foams on embodied and expressive configurations of gender, sexuality, and race. She focuses on the United States between the late 1930s with the launch of nylon—whose potential was widely celebrated as the world’s first fully synthetic fiber and the ideal replacement for silk stockings—and the late 1970s, when policies began addressing the dangerous health consequences of implantable plastics. Held untangles the complex relationships between chemical companies, the US military, the Federal Drug Administration, plastic surgeons, advertising agencies, the Hollywood star system, go-go dancers, drag queens, and fashion and industrial designers. Using feminist, queer, and trans lenses, she shows that there was never just one bombshell identity. In so doing, Held complicates typical understandings of the shaping and reshaping of gender.
Isabelle Held is the Mellon Foundation Gender and LGBTQ History Postdoctoral Fellow at The Center for Women’s History at the New York Historical.
