Nylon and the Test Tube Girl

In 1939, DuPont unveiled nylon stockings to the public at the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition and the New York World’s Fair. DuPont’s Wonder World of Science exhibitions featured a white female figure known as “The Test Tube Girl,” who embodied the latest in scientific developments, including nylon. This chapter contextualizes the Test Tube Girl and other related imagery within wider cultural discourse around racialized gender within fashion, streamlined design, and eugenics at the time. It critically examines a range of visual and material culture examples to demonstrate how whiteness was presented as the unmarked norm. Racialized gender was coded into experimental synthetic objects, such as light skin-toned wear-test underwear. The chapter also presents a counterhistory, highlighting how individuals pushed back against these exclusionary practices in the ensuing decades and crafted nylon hosiery for a wider range of consumers, including Black, queer, and trans feminine people.