Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture

In this third edition of the classic cultural history of black women’s beauty, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, Janell Hobson explores the enduring figure of the “Hottentot Venus” and the history of critical and artistic responses to her by black women in contemporary photography, film, literature, music, and dance. In 1810, Sara Baartman was taken from South Africa to Europe, where she was put on display at circuses, salons, museums, and universities as the “Hottentot Venus.” The subsequent legacy of representations of black women’s sexuality—from Josephine Baker to Serena Williams to hip-hop and dancehall videos, to our favorite pop acts including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Megan Thee Stallion—refer back to her iconic image. Via a new Preface, Hobson explores the continuing influence of Baartman’s legacy through the contemporary marketization of black women’s bodies; from popular music and pornography to advertising and presidential campaigns. A brand-new chapter analyzes fetishistic spectacles of the black “booty,” with particular emphasis on the rise in cosmetic surgeries, such as BBLs, and the different ways that twenty-first-century subjects have reshaped and redefined their bodies in an emergent global body politic. This new edition of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture is essential reading for students and researchers, as well those outside of academia interested in the subjects of black women and their beautification efforts.

Table of Contents:
Preface to the Third Edition Acknowledgments 1. Re-Presenting The Black Female Body: An Introduction 2. Venus and the Hottentot: The Emergence of an Icon 3. The Hottentot Venus Revisited: The Politics of Reclamation 4. The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body 5. Mirror, Mirror: Framing the Black Female Body for Still and Motion Pictures 6. Remnants of Venus: Evolutions of the Bootylicious Body 7. Shapeshifting: Re-Forming the Body (Geo)Politic Epilogue

About the Author :
Janell Hobson is Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. She is a contributing writer and editor of Ms. Magazine, and author of other books such as When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination (Routledge, 2021). Hobson specializes in research on black women’s histories and popular representations.

Review :
"This new edition affirms and extends the reputation of Venus in the Dark as a classic of feminist theory, critical race theory and popular culture studies. Here is an ideal text for any class seeking to elucidate the power of images and performance and, equally, the power of critically responding to them, as Hobson so brilliantly accomplishes." - Jane Caputi, Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University, USA and author of Call Your "Mutha'": A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene (2020) Praise for the Second Edition "A much-needed second edition of a classic text in black feminist criticism, cultural studies, and critical race studies. This is a timely intervention that helps understand, then connect, past and present discourses of the black female body." - Ayo A. Coly, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College, USA "Black women’s bodies as social, political, and cultural currency, still stand at the intersections of discussions of race, class, gender, beauty, and womanism. Visual culture is forever transformed by their framed, yet fierce and immutable, presence. Janell Hobson’s re-engaged conversation about the ‘Hottentot Venus’ and her imprint on the representations of identity, blackness and performance, joins a chorus of other voices—scholars, critics, and artists—who call forth that power that lies within these audacious attempts to trouble the line of an arbitrary, yet real, social context concerning sensuality and propriety." - Carol E. Henderson, Professor of English and Black American Studies, University of Delaware, USA