Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies

Immaculate Forms explores the history of women's bodies, examining how medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It uncovers the womb's miraculous and sewer-like nature, the legacy of breasts as maternal or sexual organs, the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and the question of whether the clitoris needed to be discovered.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 05 June 2025
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd

Illuminating, thoughtful and scholarly, The Financial Times offers a fascinating exploration of the history of women's bodies. Greg Jenner, BBC Woman's Hour, and the Guardian have all praised the book for its authoritative, rich, and wide-ranging scholarship. Throughout history, religious scholars, medical men, and occasionally women themselves have shaped our understanding of what constitutes a woman. She has been referred to as the weaker sex, the fairer sex, and the purer sex, among many other monikers. Often, she has been defined simply as "Not A Man." Today, we are more aware than ever of the complex relationship between our bodies and our identities. However, contrary to what some may believe, what makes a woman is a question that has always been open-ended. Immaculate Forms delves into the various ways in which medicine and religion have played a gatekeeping role over women's organs. It explores how the womb was seen as both the most miraculous organ in the body and as a sewer, uncovers the legacies of breasts as maternal or sexual organs - or both - probes the mystery of the disappearing hymen, and asks, did the clitoris need to be discovered at all?

Weight: 376g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781788163880
Edition number: Main