About: adam

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s brave new book, Branding Girls, offers us a mercurial and unflinching exploration of the commodification of the body, reduced to a vessel of projections, to a commercial brand, naturally, but also wearing the brand, the wound of the animal possessed. And with possession comes the animation, the childlike doll-play, the habitation by…

Brand: as in a mark. Branded: as in burned on an animal, a criminal, someone enslaved. Branding: as in a trademarking, a commodification. In Laura Madeline Wiseman’s terrifying Branding Girls , the poet demonstrates that our femininity is defined by advertising, name brands, and material desires. From the figure of the Japanese “elevator girls,” we…