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The Body Myth

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The Body Myth

By: Milli Hill
Narrated by: Milli Hill
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The Body Myth will transform the way a generation of women think, not just about one single aspect of being female, but about their lifetime experience of the female body.

The female body has been misunderstood for centuries.

Declared defective. Pathologised. Controlled. Exploited

In The Body Myth, feminist writer and women's health campaigner Milli Hill exposes the stories we’ve been told about being female and replaces them with a new narrative: women are powerful, strong and perfect just as we are.

From menstruation to menopause, female biology has been misunderstood, medicalised, sexualised and sold back to us as a problem to fix. The result? A world in which women doubt their own strength, knowledge and instincts — while industries profit from their insecurity.

Moving from the mirror to the clinic, from the clitoris to childbirth, Milli reveals how culture, medicine and history have misread women’s lives and why reclaiming a new understanding of female power is long overdue.

Bold, eye-opening and deeply empowering, The Body Myth invites women to see themselves differently. Because being female was never the problem. It has always been the source of incredible power.

Readers can't get enough of Milli's no-holds-barred writing:

'I love your books' J. K. Rowling

'One of my very favourite birth writers' Ricki Lake

'Milli is a compassionate and passionate writer who puts women squarely at the heart of her endeavors' Emma Barnett

©2026 Milli Hill (P)2026 HarperCollins Publishers
Gender Studies Sexual & Reproductive Health Social Sciences Spirituality Sexual Health Mythology
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Critic reviews

'I love your books' J. K. Rowling
'I feel so lucky to have read Milli’s books while pregnant, she completely changed my way of looking at giving birth' Ella Mills, Deliciously Ella
'These are much-needed, brilliant, reassuring, pioneering, kick-ass books that all women – especially mothers – should read!' Emma Jane Unsworth, award-winning author of Adults
'One of my very favourite birth writers' Ricki Lake
'Milli is a compassionate and passionate writer who puts women squarely at the heart of her endeavors' Emma Barnett
'[I]mpassioned but clear, concise and endlessly readable and puts into words loads of things you kinda vaguely thought or felt or wondered about and gives you, at last, a grip on them' Lucy Mangan
'Enlightening. Enraging. Empowering. I wish I'd read The Body Myth in my twenties. I would have lived my life differently' Katja Kaine, author of Blood of Gods and Girls
All stars
Most relevant
This is a fascinating and well-researched book which is excellently read by the author.

Really interesting listen

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This is a very enjoyable listen. It’s full of fascinating information about the female body in all its stages and is very thought provoking. I liked the comparisons between how things are in our culture with other cultures and times. Also the information about the origins of words. It's good to know how menarche should be pronounced! The questions raised are very useful to ponder. I have never understood why women are expected to give birth in stressful medical settings where everything is hard and clanging and then blamed when things don’t go as they should. Medical intervention is invaluable on occasion but those occasions would be many fewer if attention were paid to women’s experience rather than treating them as irrelevant with the only aim getting a baby out alive. There has to be a middle way between letting women get on with it unaided and treating childbirth as a medical problem to be solved by experts. The panda example made me laugh out loud; so much care and thought given to the conditions in which a panda might best give birth while women are expected to get on with it in the most alienating conditions imaginable. We need to be empowering women at every stage of their life not treating them as problems to be solved or brushed under the carpet. For all the recent focus on menopause in our culture, it has been mostly negative. The recognition of its problems is useful but what never seems to be mentioned is that for all women, it is actually a liberation. That, of course, is the real problem!

Fascinating and thought provoking

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