Counter Culture: The Allure of Mini-Mannequins

Counter Culture: The Allure of Mini-Mannequins by Heller, Steven. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781568983042.

If sex sells, what better come-on for merchants of the repressed decades of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s than the come-hither wink of a coquettish countertop mannequin? In Counter Culture, Steven Heller and Louise Fili take us on a colorful peep show of these sexy, sometimes erotic, but always fetishistic, plaster bodies and body parts. Theirs is a surreal look at how mannequins play on consumers desires, acting as agents of seduction, beckoning us toward that ultimate act--the consumption of goods. In this entertaining book, Heller and Fili unearth the fault line between sex and shopping--between voyeurism and "just looking"--that underlies much of modern commerce.