Wendy Steiner is Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an opera librettist and multimedia artist. Her many acclaimed books include The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism (1995) and Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001).

What do women most want? This is the beguiling question that sets this deliciously readable feast of a book into motion. Drawing brilliantly upon myth, literature, art, philosophy, opera, biblical stories and even evolutionary biology, Wendy Steiner has woven together centuries of cultural history in lavish answer to this question, in this way illuminating the interconnections between aesthetics and female agency; art, choice and female desire. The Beauty of Choice is a wildly inventive mix of erudition and insight, research and storytelling, a gorgeous and impassioned call to arms written in prose as clear as an alpine lake. At a moment when the cornerstones of humanistic inquiry are under siege, this is a hymn to all who believe in the human artistic impulse. Read this book and marvel.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPart I. I Like, Therefore We AreIntroduction: The Loathly Lady and #MeToo1. That Pleasure Is Past Doubt: A Note on Method2. The Women’s Work of Evolution3. “The Achieve of, the Mastery of the Thing!”: The Art of Barbara MacCallumPart II. The Testimony of Our Changeful Will4. #MeToo and Artistic Freedom5. Power Play: Picasso and His Models6. The Ornament of Nudity7. MD-light: The Art of Marlene DumasPart III. An Ecology of Beauty8. Waste Not, Want Not: The Extravagance of Beauty9. Pearls of Empathy: The Art of Kristin BeelerPart IV. Refashioning the Social Contract10. Art Against Rape: Kosovo’s Heroines11. The Love Tricks of LiberalismNotesBibliographyIndex

Wendy Steiner is Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an opera librettist and multimedia artist. Her many acclaimed books include The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism (1995) and Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001).

What do women most want? This is the beguiling question that sets this deliciously readable feast of a book into motion. Drawing brilliantly upon myth, literature, art, philosophy, opera, biblical stories and even evolutionary biology, Wendy Steiner has woven together centuries of cultural history in lavish answer to this question, in this way illuminating the interconnections between aesthetics and female agency; art, choice and female desire. The Beauty of Choice is a wildly inventive mix of erudition and insight, research and storytelling, a gorgeous and impassioned call to arms written in prose as clear as an alpine lake. At a moment when the cornerstones of humanistic inquiry are under siege, this is a hymn to all who believe in the human artistic impulse. Read this book and marvel.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPart I. I Like, Therefore We AreIntroduction: The Loathly Lady and #MeToo1. That Pleasure Is Past Doubt: A Note on Method2. The Women’s Work of Evolution3. “The Achieve of, the Mastery of the Thing!”: The Art of Barbara MacCallumPart II. The Testimony of Our Changeful Will4. #MeToo and Artistic Freedom5. Power Play: Picasso and His Models6. The Ornament of Nudity7. MD-light: The Art of Marlene DumasPart III. An Ecology of Beauty8. Waste Not, Want Not: The Extravagance of Beauty9. Pearls of Empathy: The Art of Kristin BeelerPart IV. Refashioning the Social Contract10. Art Against Rape: Kosovo’s Heroines11. The Love Tricks of LiberalismNotesBibliographyIndex