Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty

Is it right that, despite the promises of feminism, women’s bodies remain at the mercy of state, society and religion? Should a scantily clad woman, or a promiscuous one, be worth less than a fully covered woman, or a chaste one? Are being sexy and being smart really mutually exclusive? Can a woman be both body and brain? These provocative questions form the foundation of Victoria Bateman’s groundbreaking work, “Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty,” published in 2023 by Polity Press. Bateman has confronted these questions with actions as well as words. She has appeared naked on national television, on stage, in art, and at protests—using her body, as well as her brain, to deliver her message. In “Naked Feminism,” Bateman makes a compelling case for women’s bodily freedom, and explains why the current puritanical revival is so dangerous for women.

Victoria N. Bateman (born 1979) is a British feminist economist and academic specializing in economic history, and is a fellow in economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She serves as Director of Studies for the Economics Tripos at Gonville and Caius College. Brought up in Lees, Oldham, Bateman attended Saddleworth School and Oldham Sixth Form College where she was President of the Student Union, before reading economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and receiving master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. Her academic background in economic history provides a unique lens through which to examine body politics, as she connects women’s bodily freedom to broader patterns of economic development and social progress. Her previous book “The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich” (2019) explored the relationship between women’s economic participation and Western economic growth, arguing that women’s freedom—including reproductive and sexual freedom—has been a crucial but underappreciated driver of prosperity. This economic perspective distinguishes her approach from purely cultural or philosophical analyses of body politics.

Bateman is well known for her public protests against Brexit and in favor of women’s rights, occasionally appearing naked. In 2016, she attended a university meeting naked, with “Brexit means economic disaster” written across her body, specifically in protest at the result of the EU Referendum. Her performance “Brexit: The Naked Truth” allowed audience members to create a living anti-Brexit petition by signing her bare body. These actions generated significant media attention and controversy, but Bateman views them as consistent with her intellectual and political commitments. She identifies as a feminist, writing: “I believe passionately in freedom for women, and whilst many battles have been won in the past century, there is still a long way for society to move until women enjoy the levels of freedom that they should be able to. I am not afraid to use my body as well as my brain to deliver important messages.” This integration of academic work and embodied activism represents a distinctive contribution to contemporary feminist practice.

The book’s central thesis challenges what Bateman calls the “modesty pendulum”—the historical oscillation between periods of relative bodily freedom for women and periods of increased control and coverage. She argues that we are currently experiencing a dangerous swing toward greater bodily regulation, driven by a convergence of religious conservatism, secular puritan impulses, and certain strands of feminism that inadvertently reinforce body shame. Bateman contends that true women’s liberation requires rejection of all forms of bodily control, whether imposed by patriarchal religions, secular morality, or feminist theory that frames women’s bodies primarily as sites of exploitation rather than pleasure and agency.

Illustrating the swinging pendulum of bodily modesty through the ages, Bateman takes us on a journey from the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Babylon, through the birth of Christianity and Islam, to the lax morals of the medieval period and the bawdiness of Chaucer and Shakespeare; to the clampdowns of the Puritans and later the Victorians and, more recently, to the re-veiling of the Middle East and the purity pledges of modern-day America. This historical sweep demonstrates that attitudes toward women’s bodies are neither natural nor inevitable but are shaped by specific social, religious, and political conditions. What counts as appropriate feminine bodily display varies dramatically across time and place, undermining claims that particular standards of modesty are universal or timeless.

In examining ancient civilizations, Bateman shows that many early societies had relatively relaxed attitudes toward the female body. Egyptian art frequently depicted bare-breasted women, and Babylonian culture included sacred sexuality. The emergence of major monotheistic religions marked a significant shift toward greater bodily regulation, with Christianity and Islam both developing elaborate codes governing women’s dress, sexuality, and visibility in public space. Bateman analyzes how these religious traditions constructed the female body as inherently dangerous and tempting, requiring concealment and control for the maintenance of social order. This religious legacy, she argues, continues to shape contemporary attitudes even in ostensibly secular societies.

The medieval period, Bateman demonstrates, was more complex than often assumed. Despite the dominance of Christian morality, medieval culture contained significant bodily openness in literature, art, and daily life. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s plays contain frank discussions of sexuality and bodily functions that would shock many modern readers. The Protestant Reformation and the rise of Puritanism brought a dramatic shift toward greater bodily regulation in parts of Europe and colonial America. The Puritans viewed the body with deep suspicion and sought to control female sexuality through dress codes, behavioral regulation, and severe punishment for transgression. The Victorian era continued and intensified this trend, with elaborate systems of feminine modesty that covered women from neck to ankle and constructed female sexuality as essentially absent or dangerous.

Bateman traces a partial relaxation in the twentieth century, with the liberalization of dress codes, the sexual revolution, and feminist challenges to bodily regulation. However, she argues that recent decades have seen a troubling reversal. In the Middle East, the re-veiling of women represents a dramatic retreat from the relative liberalization of the mid-twentieth century. In the United States, evangelical Christianity has promoted “purity culture” that teaches young women their bodies are dangerous temptations requiring concealment. Even in secular Western contexts, Bateman identifies a creeping return to bodily shame and regulation, often justified in feminist terms as protection from objectification and exploitation.

One of Bateman’s most controversial arguments concerns what she calls a “puritanical strand” within contemporary feminism itself. She critiques feminist perspectives that emphasize the dangers and harms associated with women’s bodies—the objectifying male gaze, the exploitation of sex workers, the commodification of female appearance. While acknowledging the reality of these harms, Bateman argues that an exclusive focus on danger and exploitation can reinforce rather than challenge body shame. If women’s bodies are always and only sites of victimization, the solution becomes concealment and protection rather than liberation and celebration. This critique engages with ongoing debates within feminism about sexuality, sex work, and the body.

Bateman argues that genuine bodily freedom requires women to claim their bodies as sources of pleasure, power, and expression rather than only as sites of vulnerability. She advocates for what she calls “body positive feminism” that embraces female sexuality and physical self-display as forms of agency rather than as collaboration with patriarchy. This perspective aligns with certain strands of sex-positive feminism while challenging the anti-objectification frameworks that have been influential in contemporary feminist discourse. Bateman contends that women should have the right to be both sexual and intellectual, both embodied and cerebral, without having to choose between being taken seriously as thinkers and being open about their physicality.

The book engages extensively with debates about dress codes, Islamic veiling, and sex work. Bateman opposes both forced veiling and forced unveiling, arguing that women should have complete autonomy over their bodily presentation. However, she is skeptical of claims that veiling is always or primarily a free choice, pointing to the social, religious, and sometimes legal pressures that shape women’s decisions about dress. She advocates for secular public spaces where women are not pressured to cover their bodies for religious reasons, while also opposing bans that would force women to unveil against their will. This nuanced position attempts to navigate between competing claims of cultural respect and women’s freedom.

On sex work, Bateman takes a distinctly pro-decriminalization stance, arguing that criminalization harms sex workers while failing to address root causes of exploitation. She sees the criminalization of prostitution as another form of bodily regulation that denies women control over their own bodies. This perspective has generated significant controversy, and Bateman acknowledges that it conflicts with the abolitionist position held by many feminists who see sex work as inherently exploitative. Her economic perspective leads her to emphasize women’s agency and choice while advocating for labor protections rather than criminalization.

Bateman connects bodily freedom to economic freedom in ways that distinguish her analysis from purely cultural approaches. Drawing on her expertise as an economic historian, she argues that societies that have granted women greater bodily autonomy have also tended to experience greater economic dynamism. The suppression of women’s bodies is not just a cultural phenomenon but has material economic consequences, limiting women’s participation in public life, education, and economic activity. This argument echoes her earlier work in “The Sex Factor” and provides an economic rationale for bodily liberation that may appeal to readers less moved by purely feminist or ethical arguments.

The book addresses the role of technology and social media in contemporary body politics. On one hand, platforms like Instagram have created new spaces for women’s bodily self-expression and have supported body positivity movements that challenge narrow beauty standards. On the other hand, these same platforms enable harassment, non-consensual image sharing, and new forms of surveillance and control. Bateman navigates these tensions without offering simplistic solutions, recognizing that technology is neither inherently liberating nor inherently oppressive but is shaped by the social contexts in which it operates.

Bateman’s own use of her naked body as a form of protest and communication provides an unusual form of evidence for her arguments. She reflects on her experiences of deliberate public nudity, discussing both the power and the risks of this form of activism. Her naked protests have generated extensive media coverage and public debate, demonstrating the continued power of female nudity to provoke reaction and conversation. Critics have accused her of seeking attention or undermining serious arguments through sensationalism, while supporters view her actions as courageous challenges to entrenched norms about appropriate female behavior.

The book engages with philosophical questions about the relationship between body and mind, challenging the Cartesian dualism that treats mind and body as separate substances. Bateman argues that the devaluation of the body relative to the mind has particularly harmed women, who have historically been associated with physicality and embodiment while men have been associated with reason and intellect. True liberation requires not just intellectual respect for women but respect for women as embodied beings with legitimate claims to bodily pleasure, display, and autonomy.

“Naked Feminism” is a provocative and sometimes uncomfortable book. Bateman’s arguments and methods will provoke strong reactions from readers across the political spectrum. Conservative readers may object to her celebration of female sexuality and her critique of religious modesty norms. Some feminist readers may find her critique of “puritanical feminism” unfair or her positions on sex work troubling. But this capacity to provoke is precisely the book’s value—it forces us to confront our assumptions about women’s bodies, sexuality, and freedom. Whether or not one agrees with all of Bateman’s claims, her historical examination and theoretical analysis provide a valuable perspective for understanding why body politics is so central to gender justice.

Bateman places her work within a longer tradition of feminist body politics that includes figures like Mary Wollstonecraft, who challenged the corsets and constrictive dress of her era, and the suffragettes who used their bodies as vehicles for political protest. She also engages with contemporary theorists including Judith Butler, whose work on gender performativity informs discussions of how bodily norms are constructed and potentially subverted, and Catherine Hakim, whose concept of “erotic capital” provides another framework for understanding women’s bodily power. These intellectual connections situate “Naked Feminism” within ongoing feminist debates while demonstrating its distinctive contributions.

The book ends with a plea: feminists must unite to challenge the repression of the female body, as only then can women be truly free. Bateman calls for a feminism that celebrates rather than fears female embodiment, that claims pleasure and display as feminist acts, and that resists all forces—religious, secular, or feminist—that would shame women for their bodies. This concluding call to action emphasizes that body politics remains an urgent frontier for feminist struggle, requiring attention to both obvious forms of bodily regulation and more subtle mechanisms of shame and control.

Victoria Bateman, with her analytical rigor as an economist and passionate courage as an activist, has written a book both scholarly and radical. “Naked Feminism” draws on extensive historical research, economic analysis, and philosophical reflection, while also incorporating the author’s own experiences of embodied activism. This combination of intellectual depth and personal engagement makes the book accessible and compelling for both academic and general readers. “Naked Feminism” is essential reading for anyone concerned with bodily autonomy, gender equality, or simply wanting to understand women’s body politics. It reminds us that the most personal is indeed the most political, and that the struggle over women’s bodies is central to the broader struggle for women’s freedom. In an era when women’s bodily autonomy faces renewed challenges from multiple directions, Bateman’s work provides both historical perspective and activist inspiration for the ongoing fight for liberation.