Big Butt Book

A cornucopia of delectable derri��res

The Kama Sutra gives detailed instructions on how to spank it. Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. The female butt, tush, culo, or derri��re has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion.

Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac��as fundament fans are clinically termed��and you��ll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. A pert posterior causes instant arousal, as Zora Neale Hurston observed in Their Eyes Were Watching God: "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets." Or, as rapper Sir Mix-a-lot proclaimed, "My anaconda don��t want none, unless you��ve got buns, hun."

Having all but disappeared from western culture in the breast-obsessed second half of the 20th century, the fully formed fanny is currently enjoying a massive resurgence, attributed by some to American actress Jennifer Lopez, by others to the rise of booty-centric hip hop culture. Yet this rage for shapely butts is nothing new. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the temple of Aphrodite Kallipygos, Goddess of the Beautiful Buttocks, while a womanly rump has always been an object of worship in most of the southern hemisphere.

The Big Butt Book explores this perennial fascination with female booty��from small and taut to large and sumptuous��in the fourth installment of Dian Hanson��s critically acclaimed body parts series. Over 400 photos from 1900 to the present day, including works by Elmer Batters, Ellen von Unwerth, Jean-Paul Goude, Ralph Gibson, Richard Kern, Jan Saudek, Ed Fox, Terry Richardson and Sante D��Orazio, of butts ranging from petite Pam Anderson��s to sumptuous Serena Williams��, are contextualized by interviews with porn icon John (Buttman) Stagliano, filmmaker Tinto Brass, artist Robert Crumb, bootylicious butt queens Buffie The Body, Coco and Brazil��s Watermelon Woman, plus Eve Howard and her life-long spanking obsession.

The editor and author

Dian Hanson is a senior editor and writer for TASCHEN, with over 50 books to her credit. In addition to ARNOLD, her recent works include The Art of Pin-up, Masterpieces of Fantasy Art, and The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta.
Read here how it all began.

The Big Butt Book

ISBN 978-3-8365-9656-5