Winning cheeky and illuminating....What appears initially as a folly with a look-at-this
cover and title becomes thanks to Radke's intelligence and curiosity something much meatier
entertaining and wise. -The Washington Post Lively and thorough Butts is the best kind of
nonfiction. -Esquire Best Books of 2022 A carefully researched and reported work of cultural
history (The New York Times) that explores how one body part has influenced the female-and
human-experience for centuries and what that obsession reveals about our lives today. Whether
we love them or hate them think they're sexy think they're strange consider them too big
too small or anywhere in between humans have a complicated relationship with butts. It is a
body part unique to humans critical to our evolution and survival and yet it has come to
signify so much more: sex desire comedy shame. A woman's butt in particular is forever
being assessed criticized and objectified from anxious self-examinations trying on jeans in
department store dressing rooms to enduring crass remarks while walking down a street or high
school hallways. But why? In Butts: A Backstory reporter essayist and RadioLab contributing
editor Heather Radke is determined to find out. Spanning nearly two centuries this whip-smart
(Publishers Weekly starred review) cultural history takes us from the performance halls of
19th-century London to the aerobics studios of the 1980s the music video set of Sir
Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back and the mountains of Arizona where every year humans and horses race
in a feat of gluteal endurance. Along the way she meets evolutionary biologists who study how
butts first developed models whose measurements have defined jean sizing for millions of women
and the fitness gurus who created fads like Buns of Steel. She also examines the central
importance of race through figures like Sarah Bartmann once known as the Venus Hottentot
Josephine Baker Jennifer Lopez and other women of color whose butts have been idolized
envied and despised. Part deep dive reportage part personal journey part cabinet of
curiosities Butts is an entertaining illuminating and thoughtful examination of why certain
silhouettes come in and out of fashion-and how larger ideas about race control liberation
and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.
