I once believed that we only had to put in place the conditions for equality for the remnants of old-fashioned sexism in our culture to wither away. I am ready to admit that I was wrong.' Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, LIVING DOLLS is a straight-talking, passionate and important book that makes us look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity - today.

When Cindy Jackson was a child growing up in the Deep South, she saw her first Barbie Doll and fell in love with it. As a young singer in a well-known rock bacnd, she was a plain young woman. Bright, bubbly and vivicious, she felt that something was missing from her life, something that derived from insecurities that had been with her from childhood. She was unhappy with the way she looked. And so she set out to do something about. Cindy was to spend tens of thousands of pounds transforming herself into a living Barbie Doll. This is her story of her metamorphosis.

Living Dolls tells the story of humanity's age-old obsession with moving dolls and speaking robots, intelligent machines and bionic men - and it gives the history of ingenious inventors and their fantastical creations.

Little Shirley lives in a bewildering home inhabited by her mother, her sister, a younger brother, relatives, a number of "Daddies" and an assortment of people who pass through her house. Retreating from this world of exploitation and pain, she pretends that she is a living doll, a perfect Shirley Temple. She carefully constructs an inner life of Barbie dolls, pet cemeteries, and a constant winning smile. But as the years progress, Shirley yearns for a better and different world, and with courage and determination begins to take the first unsettling and painful steps that lead to a re-invention of herself.

Zelda is staying at her late grandmother's house when she rediscovers the doll she was given. It's old-fashioned and frayed, and Zelda doesn't think much of it. Until she realizes the doll is alive and is looking for revenge...

A glamorous, haunted life unfolds in the mesmerizing biography of the woman behind a classic children's book In 1957, a children's book called The Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book-and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together a glamorous life. Blond, beautiful Wright had begun her career as an actress and model and then turned to fashion photography before stumbling upon her role as bestselling author. But there was a dark side to the story: a brother lost in childhood, ill-fated marriage plans, a complicated, controlling mother. Edith Stevenson Wright, herself a successful portrait painter, played such a dominant role in her daughter's life that Dare was never able to find her way into the adult world. Only through her work could she speak for herself: in her books she created the happy family she'd always yearned for, while her self-portraits betrayed an unresolved tension between sexuality and innocence, a desire to belong and painful isolation. Illustrated with stunning photographs, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll tells the unforgettable story of a woman who, imprisoned by her childhood, sought to set herself free through art.