Customer Reviews

Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture

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In the sensual nudity of a truly liberated Black woman, Dr. Janell Hobson, unabashedly tackles the objective/objecting gaze of White America both past and present. In her book, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, she seeks to reclaim the beauty of the callipygian frame by allowing the full buttocks and breasts of zaftig Black women to unapologetically speak for themselves, unhindered by the voyeuristic gaze of the Other. Dr. Hobson not only allows the reader to examine the `blaxploitation' inflicted upon women from science and artistic media, but she demands that we challenge contemporary transgressions. Sara Baartman, of the infamous Hottentot Venus exhibition, was paraded around in front of men who hatefully lusted after her unrefined curves. Is this emotional slavery somehow different from Janet Jackson's pierced breast appearing on the World Wide Web, far beyond her control, to further give White men the ability to gaze and critique the `primitive' African body for which he has no appropriate perspective lens?

Dr. Janell Hobson has gifted readers with an unpretentious book that is both accessible and thorough. Her articulation involving the constructs of modern racist misogyny is engaging, logical, and artful. Dr. Hobson's diverse panel of contributors include: rapper SirMixaLot, sci-fi Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley, director of Soul Food George Tillman, and African Portfolios photographer Elisabeth Sunday. This exceptional book, destined to be a pinnacle in African American critique of female objectification, will undeniably induce praise and most importantly, provoke discourse about a topic so often veiled.