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Saartjie Baartman was 21 years-old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, the striking African beauty had made the headlines and become the talk of the social season of 1810, hailed as 'The Hottentot Venus' for her exquisite physique (not least her shapely and irresistible bottom) and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late-Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, fashion and body image, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. But celebrity brought unexpected consequences; abolitionists initiated a High Court lawsuit to win Saartjie's freedom that electrified the English public, while in Paris, a team of scientists subjected her to a humiliating ordeal as they probed the mystery of her sexual allure.