In her new cultural history, Heather Radke considers how women’s backsides have been described, displayed and fetishized and what that says about gender, race and more.
Why has the human backside been at the forefront of our cultural conversations for so long? In her book Butts: A Backstory, Radiolab contributor Heather Radke examines the politics of the buttocks through the lens of race, gender and power. As she tells Piya Chattopadhyay, our complicated relationship with the beloved – and sometimes maligned – body part reveals a bigger story about our species, our histories and ourselves.
Author Heather Radke explained that clothing sizes fluctuates between stores thanks to Ruth O Brien - who insisted on using only white women in a 1930s study on body measurements.