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Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love
This daring, intensely personal book challenges both conventional and feminist ideas about beauty by asking us to take pleasure in beauty without shame, and to see and feel the erotic in everyday life. Bringing together her varied experiences as a poet, art historian, bodybuilder, and noted performance artist, Joanna Frueh shows us how to move beyond society's equation of youth with beauty toward an aesthetic for the fully erotic human being.
A lush combination of autobiography, theory, photography, and poetry, this book continues to develop the ideas about the erotic, beauty, older women, sex, and pleasure that Frueh first addressed in Erotic Faculties. Monster/Beauty examines these issues using a provocative, often explicit, set of examples. Frueh admiringly looks at the bodies and mindsets of midlife female bodybuilders, rethinks the vampire, and revises our ideas about traditional models of beauty, such as Aphrodite. Above all, she boldly brings her personal experience into the text, weaving her reflections on female sensuality with contemporary theory.
These linked essays are as much a performance as they are a discussion, breaking down the barriers between the personal and the academic, and the erotic and the intellectual. Frueh writes passionately and beautifully, and the result is a much-needed exploration of beauty myths and taboos.
A lush combination of autobiography, theory, photography, and poetry, this book continues to develop the ideas about the erotic, beauty, older women, sex, and pleasure that Frueh first addressed in Erotic Faculties. Monster/Beauty examines these issues using a provocative, often explicit, set of examples. Frueh admiringly looks at the bodies and mindsets of midlife female bodybuilders, rethinks the vampire, and revises our ideas about traditional models of beauty, such as Aphrodite. Above all, she boldly brings her personal experience into the text, weaving her reflections on female sensuality with contemporary theory.
These linked essays are as much a performance as they are a discussion, breaking down the barriers between the personal and the academic, and the erotic and the intellectual. Frueh writes passionately and beautifully, and the result is a much-needed exploration of beauty myths and taboos.
383 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2000
3 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Frueh
13 books8 followersJoanna Frueh (1948-2020) was an artist, writer and feminist scholar. In 2008 she was awarded a Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. Her book Monster Beauty: Building the Body of Love, dealing with the aesthetics of beauty, pleasure and the erotic in everyday life was published by the University of California Press. Her writing combined theory with autobiography, photography, and poetry to develop these concepts. She was also a performance artist.
Frueh received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in History of Culture. She was Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she served from 1990 to 2006. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor of art history at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, (1983-1985) and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1981-1983).
She authored and edited several books, notably Erotic Faculties (University of California Press, 1996) and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective (1989); and was coeditor of Picturing the Modern Amazon (2000), Feminist Art Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (1994), and Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (1991). She wrote articles and reviews for Art in America, Art Journal, AfterImage, High Performance Magazine, and New Art Examiner, among others
Frueh received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in History of Culture. She was Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she served from 1990 to 2006. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor of art history at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, (1983-1985) and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1981-1983).
She authored and edited several books, notably Erotic Faculties (University of California Press, 1996) and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective (1989); and was coeditor of Picturing the Modern Amazon (2000), Feminist Art Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (1994), and Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (1991). She wrote articles and reviews for Art in America, Art Journal, AfterImage, High Performance Magazine, and New Art Examiner, among others
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
non-fiction-to-read
October 26, 2013I wish more people reviewed books. There are 8 ratings for this, widely spread, and I have no idea why anyone liked it or didn't.
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March 11, 2025Read for an essay. This was interesting, I’m not sure I agree with how she sexualises/ eroticises everything and labels that as empowering. I sort of feel the opposite. But this was interesting and I love how she blends academic writing with poetry
October 4, 2018
To be completely honest, I ended up skimming the last half of the book. Maybe I missed some hidden gems, but it was getting really hard for me to get through.
Another caveat: I was reading this specifically for my thesis, and it became apparent that it was not relevant to my research. So perhaps it's not that the book itself is bad, it's just that my opinion is a little tainted because it's not what I was expecting.
I was expecting it to put more emphasis on defying beauty norms and celebration of your body regardless of body type, age, race, etc. To a certain extent, this is true. However, there was a whole lot of stuff about sex that I was not interested in. Many sections are borderline erotica, with descriptions of Aphrodite and memories of Frueh's past romantic and sexual experiences.
As a whole, it seemed more about being comfortable about your sex life rather than comfortable about your body, with some mildly confusing anecdotes about the sexual lives of body builders and professor-student relationships.
The concept itself of monster/beauty is compelling and interesting and vital, but it's the only thing I really found of interest in the whole book. Then again, like I said, I'm not exactly the target audience...
Another caveat: I was reading this specifically for my thesis, and it became apparent that it was not relevant to my research. So perhaps it's not that the book itself is bad, it's just that my opinion is a little tainted because it's not what I was expecting.
I was expecting it to put more emphasis on defying beauty norms and celebration of your body regardless of body type, age, race, etc. To a certain extent, this is true. However, there was a whole lot of stuff about sex that I was not interested in. Many sections are borderline erotica, with descriptions of Aphrodite and memories of Frueh's past romantic and sexual experiences.
As a whole, it seemed more about being comfortable about your sex life rather than comfortable about your body, with some mildly confusing anecdotes about the sexual lives of body builders and professor-student relationships.
The concept itself of monster/beauty is compelling and interesting and vital, but it's the only thing I really found of interest in the whole book. Then again, like I said, I'm not exactly the target audience...
January 19, 2016
Challenging but enjoyable read, useful to me as an art student about to start a dissertation. I previously read Erotic Faculties and admired the lush use of language and Freuh's proposals of intelligently using personal experience, bodily awareness and the development of erotic self as complementary to academic growth, at least that is how I interpreted it. Freuh weaves theory, poetry, literary knowledge and personal experience into a captivating series. Although her ideas seem a bit difficult for me to fully grasp and articulate (I had to look up a fair few words in this book and many of the references to other writers escaped me!) it offers a great and enjoyable gateway into creative and individualistic academic writing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews