In this third edition of the classic cultural history of black women’s beauty, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, Janell Hobson explores the enduring figure of the “Hottentot Venus” and the history of critical and artistic responses to her by black women in contemporary photography, film, literature, music, and dance.

In 1810, Sara Baartman was taken from South Africa to Europe, where she was put on display at circuses, salons, museums, and universities as the “Hottentot Venus.” The subsequent legacy of representations of black women’s sexuality—from Josephine Baker to Serena Williams to hip-hop and dancehall videos, to our favorite pop acts including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Megan Thee Stallion —refer back to her iconic image. Via a new preface, Hobson explores the continuing influence of Baartman’s legacy through the contemporary marketization of black women’s bodies; from popular music and pornography to advertising and presidential campaigns. A brand-new chapter analyzes fetishistic spectacles of the black “booty,” with particular emphasis on the rise in cosmetic surgeries, such as BBLs, and the different ways that twenty-first-century subjects have reshaped and redefined their bodies in an emergent global body politic.

This new edition of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture is essential reading for students and researchers, as well those outside of academia interested in the subjects of black women and their beautification efforts.

Janell Hobson is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. She is a contributing writer and editor of Ms. Magazine, and author of other books such as When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination (Routledge, 2021). Hobson specializes in research on Black women’s histories and popular representations.