German art historian Zimmerman examines ways that the breast\u2014\u201can overdetermined body part\u201d\u2014has been highly politicized, evoking contradictory and impassioned responses across many areas of Western culture throughout history. Translated by Barfoot, Zimmerman\u2019s well-researched study draws on a wide-range of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, theology, feminist theory, gender studies, and art history, to illuminate the connection of breasts to assumptions about gender identity, race, ethnicity, and, above all, power. A particular image of breasts\u2014white, small, firm\u2014was long seen as ideal. Large, pendulous breasts, in contrast, were denigrated, associated with so-called primitivity. With her colossal breasts, the Venus of Willendorf, a statue from 25,000 B.C.E., later was deemed fat and ugly; Sarah Baartman, an African woman brought to London in 1810 and exhibited as the \u201cHottentot Venus,\u201d was considered repulsive because of her large buttocks and pendulous breasts. Zimmerman considers changing assumptions about male breasts, controversy over transgender breasts, and the confusing messages women have received about breastfeeding: that infants should\u2014or should not\u2014be fed by a wet nurse and that the breast could be a potential source of poison, best replaced by the udder of a nanny goat. An object of lust, a target of medical scrutiny and intervention, the breast has had political symbolism: the naked breast seen as an allegory of freedom and breast baring as a form of feminist protest. No other body part, Zimmerman argues persuasively, has been so divisive: whether to \u201cenlarge them, reduce them, restore them, replace them, remove them, push them up, bind them, get rid of them, and so on\u2014are signs of people\u2019s need to continually prove their femininity, masculinity, or even humanity.\u201d Two dozen images depict breasts in cartoons, photographs, and artwork.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German art historian Zimmerman examines ways that the breast\u2014\u201can overdetermined body part\u201d\u2014has been highly politicized, evoking contradictory and impassioned responses across many areas of Western culture throughout history. Translated by Barfoot, Zimmerman\u2019s well-researched study draws on a wide-range of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, theology, feminist theory, gender studies, and art history, to illuminate the connection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}