Vagina: A New Biography - Softcover

Wolf, Naomi

3.79

4,061 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844086887 ISBN 13: 9781844086887

Publisher: Virago, 2012

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An astonishing new work that radically changes how we think about, talk about and understand the vagina - and consequently how we think about women and sexuality - from Naomi Wolf, one of our most respected cultural critics and author of the modern classic, The Beauty Myth.

As Naomi Wolf embarks on a life-changing journey to tease out the link between sexuality and creativity, what she discovers is revelatory and exhilarating - a scientifically supported link between the vagina and female courage, assertiveness and consciousness itself. Emboldened by these new discoveries she looks back in history and show us how the vagina was considered sacred for centuries until it began to be cast as a threat. Even now in an increasingly sexualised world, it is thought of as slightly shameful. Why?

Vagina: A New Biography combines cutting-edge science with cultural history to explore the role of female desire and how it affects female identity, creativity and confidence. Provocative and engaging, positive and inspiring, this book brings to light female impulses, history and dreams - and, in exploring what women really need - it goes to the very core of what it means to be female.

For any woman who wants to understand her body and her mind and the culture that defines her - Vagina is essential reading.

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Review:

Naomi Wolf has tried hard to look at female sexuality as it really is, not as pop culture or political correctness would like it to be... The science of female arousal is complex and woefully neglected, and Wolf has done us all a favour by trying to drag it into the mainstream (Jemima Lewis The Mail on Sunday)

Wolf's tome could not be better timed... at a time when Western women's bodies have never been more highly politicised, the one person who might be able to shine a ray of light... has to be Wolf. Perhaps this history will do for 21st century activism what The Beauty Myth did for 1990s feminists... Wolf is exploring territory we haven't heard about since Germaine Greer in the 1970 (Viv Goskrup Independent on Sunday)

Worth respecting, even celebrating... there is [here] a very intriguing thesis about love... If you are one of those School of Cosmo feminists who has been arguing for decades that women should be more like men sexually... then Wolf's take is genuinely revolutionary (Sarah Vine The Times)

Part memoir, part cultural history and part scientific journey around women's sexuality, the best elements of which illuminate how little women generally know about their own anatomy... (Emma Brockes Guardian)

Book Description:

Naomi Wolf is back, with a book that is as exciting, dramatic and controversial as The Beauty Myth

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