Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front (and Back)

An honest, funny, neurotic, and totally gross love child of Mindy Kaling and Mary Roach.

＂Forget that old fake news about sugar and spice. With wit and candor, Mara Altman tells us what girls are really made of -- and it’s a hair-raising revelation.＂ --Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume

Mara Altman’s volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder a lot of stuff over the years. Like, why wasn’t evolution smart enough to build us with buttholes made out of something more durable, like titanium? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn’t it all just cleavage? These and questions 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,＂ aptly named to describe the bodily regions on which they focus, Altman takes the reader on a wild and relatable journey from head to toe, exploring such dynamic and oft neglected characters as the armpit, vulva, anus, hair, and blood.

A combination of personal anecdotes and research with added elements of science, history, sociology and anthropology, GROSS ANATOMY holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and grody parts and shows us the naked truth - that there is greatness in our grossness.