It was a lot of information! It felt like I was trying (and failing) to become an expert on everything, from Jane Fonda’s career to the gender politics of drag to the history of South Africa in the 18th century. Will you share a bit about what it was like to manage such a massive amount of information? It’s clear that you put a great deal of time, effort and care into learning about a dizzying variety of people, places, eras, fashions, cultures and more for Butts.
Read our starred review of ‘Butts’ by Heather Radke. One of the questions I had was about why and how mainstream beauty standards change, and the butt is such a powerful example of what that looks like. It was this recent interest in the butt that made me think it might be a potent topic to write about now.
In order to understand the symbolic significance of womens’ butts, I would need to explore many historical moments, as well as the science of the butt and the recent explosion of interest in mainstream pop culture. I started this book as an essay about the connection between the bustle and the life of Sarah Baartman-a Khoe woman from rural South Africa who was taken to London in 1810 and put on exhibit so people could pay to view her butt-but I quickly realized that the questions I was asking had answers that were much larger than a single essay could contain. What made you decide that butts merited more than an interview or essay, but instead an entire book? Why were you moved to write about butts now? I spoke with people who had very different bodies from mine and came from very different backgrounds, and it was always fascinating to hear how people feel about their bodies and what helped shape those feelings. For me, one of the most exciting parts was doing oral histories with different women about their bodies for the initial background research. It is incredibly difficult to write a book, and a true honor and thrill to have it published. Yes! I have wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl wearing bifocals, thumbing through the pages of Anne of Green Gables at Schuler Bookstore in Okemos, Michigan. The author spoke with BookPage about what she learned when she looked at butts head-on.Ĭongratulations on your first book! Did you always want to be an author? What’s been the most exciting aspect so far? What is it about butts, exactly, that has made them such a source of fascination throughout history? In her debut book, Butts: A Backstory, reporter Heather Radke seeks to answer that question with wit, empathy and verve.
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