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Sparkle (1)
I cannot lie, I like "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Mostly I find the beat and cartoonish rap irresistible. But part of the reason I enjoy it is because, as one, I appreciate the unabashed celebration of black women with large behinds who do not fit the predominant beauty norm prescribed by American beauty magazines and popular culture.
However, the celebration also objectifies women in a way I find uncomfortable and creates it's own standard (e.g. "itty-bitty waist") that puts pressure on black women to meet. Centuries after Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (known as "The Hottentot Venus") was displayed in freak shows and only mere decades after her preserved body parts were removed from display in a French Museum, the worth and value of black women is still reduced in too many minds to a single body part.
Recently, there have been two tremendously thoughtful examinations of why glorifying the gluteus maximus can be troubling.
It's a Black Thing, You Wouldn't Understand
Tami from What Tami Said found that big, black booties "intrigue" Jezebel's readership. Tami was troubled by comments from Jezebel's mostly-white readership on a post about fascination with what Tami calls a "hip hop booty fest:" Straight Stuntin magazine.
I have to admit that I might not be so bothered by this post if it had, say, been posted by my blogsister Professor Tracey on Aunt Jemima's Revenge. Why? Because as a blog with a predominantly black readership, AJR feels like a place where "we" can discuss black pop culture without the judgment or generalizations of the mainstream. Something feels icky about a readership of mostly white women evaluating a black magazine that objectifies black women and, for the most part, deeming it acceptable. The amazed ogling of black behinds in a mainstream has shades of Sarah Bartmann:
Some of these women's asses seem to defy gravity. I am actually dumbstruck by them. I know, I know we aren't supposed to relegate a woman to her parts, but I just feel kind of humbled by the two asses in the third picture. Kind of like being in ass church. I feel reverence and awe.
Do these women have cellulite that was Photoshopped away? Or do darker skin women just not get cellulite the way my white ass does? Or is that one model onto an anti-cellulite secret with her cupcake diet?
Even among other women--among other so-called feminists--our physicality is deemed freakish, something to be weighed and pondered and questioned. And I do realize that the OP is a biracial/black woman and several black women, including a model who will appear in a future SS issue, participated in the comments thread. The fact remains that for the majority of readers, this post represented a bit of cultural tourism, as evidenced by the comments and questions about black beauty standards and black women's bodies that the piece elicited.
It hard not to bristle when white women profess "reverence and awe" for the confidence some black women have in their non-skinny bodies, that they as white women feel they cannot aspire to, when it comes by way of appreciation and fascination with the celebration of our objectified bodies.
The post is also cross-posted at Racialicious and it is worth reading comments both there and at Tami's blog.
Booty Myths
As mentioned in the comment Tami featured above, the Jezebel post pulled a snippet from Straight Stuntin of a model named "Seven" talking about her "cupcake diet."
SS: How do you maintain your figure? Diet and exersize? [sic]
Lmao! I'm on a cupcake diet! I walk to the bakery buy a cupcake eat half there, walk back home and eat the other half, I figure the calories I burn balance themselves out, plus I pass a gym coming and going! Everybody wins!
Years ago, BlogHer CE lainad wrote about Black women and body image and shared with us the story of video dancer, Buffie "The Body" Caruth and her description of how she maintains her "tiny waist and large behind:"
In this article Carruth admits that when she was younger and quite skinny, she started taking nutritional supplements to enhance her curves. It is revealed in the article that she does not exercise (which is not a sin), eats mostly junk food and still relies on supplemental milkshakes to keep her now - famous butt a larger than average size. She is a sexualized figure, not perceived as a real person, whose shape caters to the stereotypical sexual preferences
