Naked Feminism

Victoria Bateman is author of the acclaimed book The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich and is a Fellow in Economics at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. She has been profiled by The Times, has written for the Guardian, The Telegraph and Bloomberg, and has appeared on numerous occasions on the BBC and ITV. Victoria is also known for using her body in art and protest, including to challenge the assumptions and stigma surrounding women’s bodies.

“Brilliant. Revolutionary. Revealing.”Kate Lister, author of A Curious History of Sex“As honor killings and Internet influencers collide, we could all use a little help us making sense of what being unclothed really means nowadays. I love this book and the world needs it. It’s readable, enlightening, joyful, infuriating, irreverent, and utterly fascinating. Without preaching and with the perfect combo of heaviness and humor, our heroic author explains why nakedness - and how we think about it - is a critical topic worth laying bare.”Amanda Palmer, author of the New York Times bestseller The Art of Asking“Outstanding. A controversial and important book with its finger so firmly on the pulse of feminist activism that its timing could hardly be more perfect.”Emma Rees, author of The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History“Naked Feminism does not require you to strip off to engage with its ideas, but it does challenge you to cast off your judgements about women's bodies.”Annebella Pollen, author of Nudism in a Cold Climate“Victoria Bateman does a wonderful job of dissecting the binaries which tear women, and societies, into segments. She delves into why nudity and sexual labor threaten to upend society, and how that pressures all sides to comply with modesty culture. She is to be congratulated for writing Naked Feminism – it is another step towards re-incorporating our bodies into our concepts of humanity and self.”Jessica Stoya, author of Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn“This book saddens, shocks and alarms whilst revolutionising the way we think about and value women. Ms Bateman traces dualisms of many kinds: Madonna versus whore, respectable versus disgraced, chaste versus unholy, hot versus slutty. These are the kinds of conceptual structures around which moral values play out, and they are essential to understanding what nudity means to us and the influence that the cult of female modesty has on all societies.”British Naturism“Advocating instead for a 'naked feminism' that broadly embraces the concept of 'my body, my choice,' Bateman makes a convincing and well-organized case. It’s a spirited rallying cry.” Publishers Weekly“Provocative and thoughtful, Naked Feminism is a highly original book set to garner considerable attention.”Philippa Levine, University of Texas at Austin

• Figures and TablesAcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: The Modesty Cult: A HistoryChapter 2: The Modesty Cult: The DangersChapter 3: The Modesty Cult: The CausesChapter 4: Beware Puritanical FeminismConclusionNotesReferencesIndex