Unapologetic Beauty

Joanna Frueh is a writer, performance artist, scholar, art critic and historian, and teacher whose work expands into photographic, video, and audio pieces. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art in 2008. Her books include Erotic Faculties, Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love, Swooning Beauty: A Memoir of Pleasure, and Clairvoyance (For Those in the Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004. She has performed and lectured in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom and is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Nevada, Reno.Frances Murray, a veteran fine arts photographer, has received several major awards, including a National Endowment for the Visual Arts grant and a National Endowment for the Arts U.S./Japan Exchange Fellowship. Her photographs are in the collections of several U.S. museums.

• ContentsAn Art of FriendshipCulture’s Breasts ICulture’s Breasts IIMy BreastsApologyHyperbeautyBeauty HeroesBeauty RedefinedThe Pleasure of Pleasing OurselvesLanguageThe 4 C’s of Creating BeautyAcknowledgmentsNotesGlossary

"Unapologetic Beauty is a downright necessary meditation on women’s wisdom and beauty in aging. Joanna Frueh and Frances Murray-in writing and image-call out the fact that our ‘hyperbeauty’ culture relies on stereotypical ‘taboos’ to make individuals unique or edgy, when we must rather recognize that ‘real flesh, real love: they are the taboos.’ And the world needs more of both."-Maria Elena Buszek, University of Colorado, Denver"A wonderful, evocative depiction of a woman in all her glory."-Susan Love, author of Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book"Joanna Frueh develops her earlier strands: body image; representation of self; relationships between image, text, and body; body work; illness and healing. Starting with friendship and creativity, she draws these themes in her work together in a powerful invocation of moving toward self-love through self-acceptance. It will always be the right time to read this, no matter the body one inhabits."-Hilary Robinson, editor of Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 1968-2014