โWinning, cheeky, and illuminatingโฆ.What appears initially as a folly with a look-at-this cover and title becomes, thanks to Radkeโs intelligence and curiosity, something much meatier, entertaining, and wise.โ โThe Washington Post
โLively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction.โ โEsquire, Best Books of 2022
A โcarefully researched and reported work of cultural historyโ (The New York Times) that explores how one body part has influenced the femaleโand humanโexperience for centuries, and what that obsession reveals about our lives today.
Whether we love them or hate them, think theyโre sexy, think theyโre 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 womanโs 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 โwhip-smartโ (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-Lotโs โBaby Got Backโ 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 โBuns of Steel.โ She also examines the central importance of race through figures like Sarah Bartmann, once known as the โVenus Hottentot,โ 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 fashionโand how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.