Atomic Bombshells

Isabelle Held's 'Atomic Bombshells' examines how military-industrial plastics—nylon, silicone, and polyurethane foams—moved from wartime uses into everyday and medical practices, reshaping ideals of femininity, sexuality, and race in postwar United States.

Drawing on archives across industry, the military, medicine, advertising, and popular culture, Held traces the material and linguistic pathways that tied war technologies to lingerie, cosmetics, implants, and entertainment.

She uses feminist, queer, and trans lenses to show there was never a single 'bombshell' identity and highlights how design, marketing, and regulation intersected to produce embodied norms.

The book also explores the legal and health legacies of implantable plastics and how many materials from that era remain in use today.

'Atomic Bombshells' complicates narratives of technological transfer by centering bodies as both sites and agents of material transformation.