The Last Taboo

This is the first academic book ever written on women and body hair, which has been seen until now as too trivial, ridiculous or revolting to write about. Even feminist writers or researchers on the body have found remarkably little to say about body hair, usually ignoring it completely. It would appear that the only texts to elaborate on body hair are guides on how to remove it, medical texts on 'hirsutism', or fetishistic pornography on 'hairy' women. The last taboo also questions how and why any particular issue can become defined as 'self-evidently' too silly or too mad to write about. Using a wide range of thinking from gender theory, queer theory, critical and literary theory, history, art history, anthropology and psychology, the contributors argue that in fact body hair plays a central role in constructing masculinity and femininity and sexual and cultural identities. It is sure to provide many academic researchers with a completely fresh perspective on all of the fields mentioned above.

ISBN 0719075009   Pages 256 ISBN13 9780719075001 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Manchester University Press   Weight (grammes) 513 Imprint Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Format Hardback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 31 Mar 2007   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress GT   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY 305.4   Academic level Undergraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		The last taboo : women, body hair and feminism by Karin Lesnik-Oberstein		1
2		'The wives of geniuses I have sat with' : body hair, genius and modernity by Daniela Caselli		18
3 A		history of pubic hair, or reviewers' responses to Terry Eagleton's After theory by Louise Tandeur		48
4		Hairs on the lens : female body hair on the screen by Alice Macdonald		66
5		'La justice, c'est la femme a barbe!' : the bearded lady, displacement and recuperation in Apollinaire's Le Mamelles de Tiresias by Stephen Thomson		83
6		'That wonderful phaenomenon' : female body hair and English literary tradition by Carolyn D. Williams		103
7		Fur or hair : l'effroi et l'attirance of the wild-woman by Jacqueline Lazu		126
8		Designers' bodies : women and body hair in contemporary art and advertising by Laura Scuriatti		146
9		Bikini fur and fur bikinis by Sue Walsh 166
10		Women with beards in early modern Spain by Sherry Velasco		181
11		On Frida Kahlo's mustache : a reading of Self-portrait with cropped hair and its criticism by Neil Cocks		191

"This 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 the ambiguities and efforts to contain the uncertain and fragile boundaries constructed within modern western culture between nature and culture."--Prof. Erica Burman, Manchester Metropolitan University

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