Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first academic book ever written on women and body hair. The study argues that body hair plays a central role in constructing masculinity and femininity and sexual and cultural identitiesThe chapters each analyse through a specific focus how body hair underpins ideas of the cultural' and natural' in western culture. -- .
Trade ReviewThis is a genuinely entertaining and informative book that reveals body hair as a vital methodological lens by which to illuminate not only practices of regulation around gender and sexuality, but also highlighting how these are linked to 'race', colonialism and ultimately to to the ambiguities and efforts to contain the uncertain and fragile boundaries constructed within modern western culture between nature and culture.' -- .
Table of Contents1. The last taboo: women, body hair and feminism - Karín Lesnik-Oberstein
2. ‘The wives of geniuses I have sat with’: body hair, genius, and modernity - Daniela Caselli
3. A history of pubic hair or reviewers’ responses to Terry Eagleton’s 'After Theory' - Louise Tondeur
4. Hairs on the lens: female body hair on the screen - Alice Macdonald
5. ‘La justice, c’est la femme à barbe !’: the bearded lady, displacement and recuperation in Apollinaire’s ‘Les mamelles de Tirésias’ - Stephen Thomson
6. ‘That wonderful phænomenon’: female body hair and English literary tradition - Carolyn D. Williams
7. 'Fur' or hair: l’effroi et l’attirance of the wild-woman - Jacqueline Lazú
8. Designers’ bodies: women and body hair in contemporary art and advertising - Laura Scuriatti
9. Bikini fur and fur bikinis - Sue Walsh
10. Women with beards in early modern Spain - Sherry Velasco
11. On Frida Kahlo’s moustache: A reading of 'Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair and its criticism - Neil Cocks
