Clear Nude: The Lens + the Nude, Issue IV, Summer 2015 ClearNude: The Lens + the Nude, Issue IV, Summer | Page 60
BOOK REVIEW
Curvology:
s
The Origins & Power
of Female Body Shape
by David Bainbridge
omething remarkable has happened to women, something unique. Of all the
creatures in the animal kingdom, human females stand out as having one special, powerful feature: curves. That may be good news for men, but it makes
life complicated for women. Why do only human females have curves, how do
they affect their lives, and why do they think about them so much? It was these simple questions which set David Bainbridge, a popular science writer and Cambridge anatomist and
reproductive biologist, on a evolutionary, biological, psychological and socio-cultural quest
to discover how female curviness lies at the centre of our species’ success – what it means
to be human, and what it means to be a woman.
Curvology follows an arc through human history, from the evidence of our ancestors’ bones
picked from the African dust, to the cult of the pre-clubbing selfie. One half of the members
of our species live their lives in a body unlike any other in the animal kingdom, and this body
exerts remarkable, pervasive effects on their movement, fertility, longevity, thought, mood,
and even success.
Divided into ten chapters the book is a focused, novel, humane and accessible approach on
the female body, rooted in the authors ‘zoological’ approach to this most distinctive aspect
of human appearance.
60 Clear Nude | summer 2015