About this item
An honest, funny, neurotic, and totally gross love child of Mindy Kaling and Mary Roach.Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn't have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn't it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it's like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies. Divided into two sections, "The Top Half" and "The Bottom Half," with cartoons scattered throughout, Altman's book takes the reader on a wild and relatable journey from head to toe--as she attempts to strike up a peace accord with our grody bits. With a combination of personal anecdotes and fascinating research, Gross Anatomy holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and body parts and shows us the naked truth: that there is greatness in our grossness.
About the Author
Mara Altman writes about issues that embarrass her (i.e. chin hair) , because she has found that putting shame on the page diffuses the stigma, leaving her with a sense of empowerment and freedom. Her newest book, Gross Anatomy: Dispatches From the Front (And Back) , publishes August 2018.
Over time, Mara has become progressively fearful of airplane flights, but less concerned with getting fat (in the Spring of 2010, she started to eat bacon) . She feels most inspired when walking across bridges and lives the perpetual Catch-22 of not being able to go to sleep without first drinking a glass of water, but then having to get up to pee at 3 a.m. She reminds herself that things could always be worse. Then she's stuck thinking about all the bad things that could happen. And then she can't get back to sleep.
Mara has published seven best-selling Kindle Singles. Thanks for Coming, her first book, which follows her on an adventure to find her orgasm, was translated into three languages - German, Spanish and Portuguese. The book was also optioned by HBO. Before going freelance, she worked at daily newspapers both in India and Thailand and was a staff writer for the Village Voice. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine and other outlets.
