Anna Holmes - The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things

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Copyright 2013 by Gawker Media, LLC

Cover Illustration by Patric King/House of Pretty

Cover copyright 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

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First ebook edition: October 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4555-0279-0

FOR ALL THE JEZEBELS, biblical and otherwise

Talented nineties R&B singer who died at the age of twenty-two in a particularly celebrity way after her plane crashed coming back from a music video shoot in the Bahamas because it was weighted down with luggage. Her legacy lives on through the work of contemporaries like Missy Elliott and her producer Timbaland, in scandalous Drake remixes, and in the memory of her brief, illicit, and annulled marriage to R. Kelly (and the song Age Aint Nothing But A Number, which he wrote and she recorded).

Polish-born sculptor who spent much of her early life under Soviet domination and learned to make do with the materials she could cobble together. In the 1960s, Abakanowicz created three-dimensional Abakans forms with materials she wove herself. In the eighties, she moved on to bronze, stone, wood, and iron sculptures. Her work is installed around the world. In 2006, Agora, a large permanent project for Chicagos Grant Park consisting of more than a hundred nine-foot-tall iron cast figures, was installed.

Venerable retailer of safari gear loved by Theodore Roosevelt that was acquired and transformed in 1988 by Ohio-based Limited Brands into a suburban prep staple known as much for its cologne-drenched mall stores and shirtless catalog models as for its questionable employee look policy and its history of releasing sexist and racist T-shirts. Nineties boy band LFO once sang the refrain I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch, but when the company began selling T-shirts with slogans such as Show the Twins and Who Needs Brains When You Have These?, it was hard not to believe the store felt the same way about its female customers.

A chemical agent or drug used to terminate a pregnancy, usually either by hormonally inducing a miscarriage, by activating contractions, or by some combination of the two. Mifepristone, the drug commonly known as RU-486, works hormonally; misoprostol (Cytotec) and most early abortifacients like ergot and cotton root bark promote contractions and are also used during childbirth for that reason. More than a century before the French chemist Georges Teutsch synthesized mifepristone, cotton root and ergot were often advertised as French renovating pills. The term abortifacient is also regularly and deliberately misused by right-wingers to describe the morning-after pill, Plan B, which is a contraceptive.

A safe and legal way to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Belgrade-born, New Yorkbased performance artist, considered one of the pioneers of the genre. Abramovis work revolves around the human body, particularly its physical limits and tolerance for pain: shes particularly well known for a six-hour 1974 performance, Rhythm 0, during which she provided the gallery audience with seventy-two objectsincluding a gun and a bullet, a rose, a scalpel, a whip, and honeythat they were permitted to use on her body in any way they chose. Video of the work shows gallery-goers removing Abramovis clothing, writing on her body with lipstick, and scratching her with the roses thorns; one person aimed the gun at her head. Abramovis 2010 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art brought her more acclaim for her piece