The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body

The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body

by Desmond Morris

Vintage, $130

Consider that women could easily outplay men on the piano if the keyboard was made slightly smaller. Also, Roman prostitutes were required by law to wear blonde wigs. These are among the discursions by zoologist and anthropologist Desmond Morris, whose work over the past 35 years has largely ridden on The Naked Ape. Women, for Morris, are 'the brilliant end-point of a million years of evolution'. He begins The Naked Woman with the hair and works his way down to the feet, attempting (not always successfully) to draw parallels with our primate cousins. For instance, women through their childbearing years have full lips, while those of men become thinner in adulthood, more like the monkey and ape. Morris suggests that the lips are an extension of a woman's childlike features, called neoteny, to elicit a protective response from men. Women have about twice as much body fat as men, have higher voices, smoother skin and more finely boned faces - all infantile traits. He concludes that women are superior to men in a number of ways, and that their subjugation is a recent phenomenon.