Butts

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke delves deep into the cultural and historical significance of a body part often overlooked in terms of its profound impact on society: the buttocks. Radke begins her exploration by addressing the evolutionary roots of the human butt, detailing how this unique feature played a crucial role in our development and survival. From there, she embarks on a journey spanning nearly two centuries, examining how butts have been perceived, celebrated, and criticised across different eras and cultures. “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, criticised, 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 Baartman, once known as the “Venus Hottentot,” Josephine Baker, Jennifer Lopez, and other women of colour whose butts have been idolised, 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.

Radke masterfully combines meticulous research with engaging storytelling, making the book not only informative but also wholly captivating. By the end of Butts, readers will have a comprehensive understanding of how this body part has influenced everything from fashion and fitness to race relations and personal identity.