The last taboo

This is the first academic book ever written on women and body hair. The study argues that body hair plays a central role in constructing masculinity and femininity and sexual and cultural identitiesThe chapters each analyse through a specific focus how body hair underpins ideas of the ‘cultural’ and ‘natural’ in western culture.

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 to the ambiguities and efforts to contain the uncertain and fragile boundaries constructed within modern western culture between nature and culture.'

Karín Lesnik-Oberstein is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Reading