AKA ELONGATED LABIA

The first time Saartjie Baartman was dragged out to squat before the mob at 225 Piccadilly, the show's promoters billed her genitals as resembling the skin that hangs from a turkey's throat. For several years, working-class Londoners crowded in to shout vulgarities at the protruding buttocks and large vulva of the unfortunate woman made famous across Europe as the "Hottentot Venus". The aristocracy were no less fascinated at what they saw as a sexual freak, but they had private showings.

Death in Paris a few years later treated the young woman from South Africa's Eastern Cape little better than life. She was carved up by Napoleon's surgeon, who made a cast of her body, pickled her genitals and brain, and put her skeleton on display in a museum.

But now, nearly two centuries after Baartman was lured on to a ship for England with the promise that she would make her fortune, the Hottentot Venus is to go home. The French senate has voted to release Baartman's remains from the Musé de L'Homme, where they were on public display until shame caught up with the administrators in 1976. The senate debate was an emotional affair, with the crucial question posed by the man who sponsored the bill, Nicolas About. "This young woman was treated as if she was something monstrous. But where in this affair is the true monstrosity?" he asked.