BUTTS

A thorough uncovering of the symbolism, history, and significance of the female posterior in Western culture.

“Women’s butts,” writes Radke, a contributing editor and reporter at NPR’s Radiolab, “have been used as a means to create and reinforce racial hierarchies, as a barometer for the virtues of hard work, and as a measure of sexual desire and availability.” Following the introduction, the author divides the book into seven sections and accompanying subsections. The section titled “Sarah” refers to Sarah Baartman, born into the Khoe tribe, in present-day South Africa, in the late 1770s. She was captured and forced to perform as a fetishized specimen (“Hottentot Venus”) whose large butt represented a European “fantasy of African hypersexuality.” “Norma” was fashioned by American eugenics in 1945 to represent the so-called “normal” American female body: fertile and “native-born white.” Having codified a staggering amount of information, the author relays her research coherently, but her language and sentence structures are repetitive, even tedious. Radke’s insertion of her own experiences often casts her as an enthusiastic, earnest guide, but in certain sections, it serves only to underscore the often tame nature of her investigation. “The first time someone told me my butt was sexy,” she writes, “was in 2003….Since high school, my butt had grown ever larger.” To her credit, Radke includes a suitably wide array of sources, from studies suggesting that “hominids may have become bipedal, in part, in order to run” to the classic rap track “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot. “From the start,” she writes, “the people involved in producing the song and video…interpreted it differently: some found it hilarious, others uncomfortable and objectifying, still others empowering.” The author also includes excerpts from her numerous interviews with other relevant cultural figures, such as the creator of the late-1980s, early-’90s fitness phenomenon Buns of Steel.

An intermittently informative, surprisingly staid treatment of the subject.