Between·the·Sheets |Part Booty|

“Most often attention was not focused on the complete black female on display…They are to not look at her as a whole human being.  They are to notice only certain parts.”

Bell Hooks, Black Looks

A few Between the Sheets posts ago I ended with two pictures, one of an ape’s ass and one of a Sketcher Shape Ups shoe ad, admonishing women to heart their upside-down heart, or their booty.  Today I want to focus on the rear end.

In previous posts, I discussed how black female sexuality has manifested itself in overexposure (available for purchase or taking by anyone)  and invisibility (not authentically discussed) . To summarize, for the past two centuries black women’s sexuality has been obsessively defined as uncontrollable, grotesquely fascinating, and unworthy of respect.  These popular beliefs obscure other more accurate reflections of black females’ erotic lives, and make it difficult for many black women to thrive as agents for their own sexual needs and desires. This post will discuss certain aspects of ass partialism as well as the commodification of the black body in terms of general ass consciousness.

Partialism is defined as:  “an emphasis of sexual interest upon one part of the body,” or “a form of fetishism in which the sexual stimulus is a part of the body, as pictures of feet.”

Personally, I don’t see a problem with partialism as long as variety is accepted within a preference.  For example, maybe legs totally turn you on.  Skinny pins, big calves, knobby knees, bowl legs, hairy haunches, short stems; any and all legs will do the trick.  Things get a little dicey when partiality includes a specific size, shape, or color, at the exclusion of other types.

For example, I have a certain male friend that rejects women based on their hip size (the more they are shaped like a tall, 14-year-old boy, the better).  I see this as inherently problematic.  I kick myself every time I think of how many times I didn’t point this out to him (mainly because he was insulting all women with any mASS at all, but also cause his standards are highly unrealistic and almost impossible to maintain.  Lets face it, honey…once that woman pops out the 2-7 children that you also deem a requirement, her body will cease to resemble a toothpick).  I also kick myself because I think his general fear of big hips pointed to a certain amount of latent racism.

In any case, it’s easy to see that black women’s/large rear ends have been revered and hated in our culture.  Take Cindy Crawford’s comments about Jennifer Lopez’ booty (which inspired this amazing, imaginary fight scene that floats authorless around the interwebs).  Also try to remember a time, long ago when Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian were still friends (I know, it’s hard folks), when they broke up Paris made a comment describing Kim’s ass as, “gross.”  The rear end thing is not limited to black women anymore, but really, any non-white woman.  White women’s asses are small, thin, flat, well contained.  Non-white women’s asses are big, juicy, shameful

According to legend, this fascination with rear ends, started with the objectification and display of Sarah Baartman in 1810, and eventually spread to European culture and fashion in the form of the Victorian bustle, which made its first appearance in late 1800′s.

But that was a long time ago, yah?  Yeah, but the same stuff is still going on.

Speaking of and Kim KardASShian:

The bustle is interesting because it imitates a particular body part (ASS) of women thought to be sexually deviant and less than human (BLACK), while also acting as a signifier of wealth.  Whaaaa?  Paradoxically, only very rich women could pay to get a butt structure made.  And only richer women could then afford to get that butt structure covered with yards and yards of beautiful fabric.

It’s like everyone was sippin’ on haterade.  You know, like your homegirl that tells you your boyfriend ain’t no good, and then when y’all break up you find that the silly ho been hangin round, trying to get him to break her off a piece…sorry, some hood just came out.  You know what I’m sayin tho, right?  Sometimes people hate because they want what you have for themselves.

I think these two quotes have helped me when thinking about the relationships between dehumanization, materialism, and sexual desire.

“Contemporary forms of oppression do not routinely force people to submit.  Instead, they manufacture consent for domination so that we lose our ability to question and thus collude in our own subordination.”

- Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics

“Victorian men must have benefited from the sex appeal the bustle style exuded. A man’s imagination could have run wild wondering what part of the style was all woman and what part was manufactured.”

-I steal so many quotes. I forgot where I got this from.  From some blog.  My apologies.

If my interpretation is correct, then the bustle was used to create the illusion of a big butt, which meant unbridled sexuality, which was condemned if you had one skin color, but revered if you happened to have the other.

This is still going on today.

Exhibit A (this is the only exhibit, but still)

I see London, I see France, you’ve got something in your pants.

Is it surprising then that rumors have been swirling about the  bootylicious entertainer, Beyonce?  Several gossip rags, and lots of youtube videos, claim that she uses pads similar to that pictured above to enhance her badonk, which in all likelihood is a great ASSet to her.  What does this have to do with conversations about authenticity and sexuality?  Does it even matter?

I really don’t have the mental energy to weave my thoughts around the following images, but I’m sure you can see where I’m going with these.

Back to the future.

I have so many problems with this ad.  1. Declaration of Independence,  bASStardized;      2. These women all have the same body, I see no significant differences between them; 3. I’ve fallen for claims like this before (i.e. Apple Bottom Jeans, J. Lo Jeans.  Made me feel worse when they didn’t fit).

I’m posting this video because I watched it after I had done all of this really intense reading about black female sexuality and it MADE ME CRY.  I felt so angry for type of woman portrayed in this video, begging for approval, touting her supernatural sexual capabilities, changing clothes so many times, fucking tap dancing…and for what?!  All she asks for in return is one night.  One night!  I’m sorry, if I fucking learn how to tap dance for you, you better return the favor in kind.  I’m talking salsa, merengue, o algo como eso.  Sabes?

I want to end with this quote from one of the sexiest women of all times, Marilyn Monroe:

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”

Projection.  Collusion.  Illusion.  Invisibility.  It’s all there in that quote.  Aaaaand, I’m done.

Love and Enjoy.

Click here to find the next post in the Between·the·Sheets series.

Between·the·Sheets |Part Spectacle|

“She emerged from a cage on a raised platform, was presented as an animal to the European community…She was gazed at, heckled, objectified, caricatured, and dehumanized.”

Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, The Body Politic

Let’s start with a woman who I like to call the godmother of humps,  Saartije (Afrikaans for Lil’ Sarah) Baartman.  You may remember her from this post, where I briefly pointed to the possible inspiration behind (behind, hehe) the bustle, and more recent examinations of it by Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo.  Ostensibly, her junk in the trunk popularized such fashions.

She was commonly called the “Hottentot Venus.”

To contextualize this sketch, its creator Nicolas Huet le Jeune, seems to have had a particular fondness for rendering animals.

Originally a servant for a Boer family in South Africa, Baartman traveled to Europe around 1810, where her rear end became a popular attraction in both London and Paris.  Her “massive” buttocks and supposed primitive vaginal extremities made her the object of much interest and speculation.  Freak shows were popular at the time, and often featured “exotics” who were nothing more than actors. From the essay Gender, Race and Nation, Anne Fausto-Sterling points out that:

Sometimes the shows of exotic people of color involved a complete fabrication.  A Zulu warrior might really be a Black citizen of London, hired to play the part.

The dishonesty inherent in these spectacular showcases, caused Lil’ Sarah’s body to be subject to physical investigation by curious patrons.   As Fausto-Sterling mentions:

One eyewitness recounted with horror the poking and pushing that Baartman endured, as people tried to see for themselves whether her buttocks were the real thing.

In the two to five years that she lived and performed in London and Paris, Lil’ Sarah’s representation of black womanhood added to racist and scientific investigations suggesting black inferiority and thus, being deserving of white exploitation.  Sarah’s body was used as a visual evidence of a link between blacks and monkeys, her distended rear end was commonly compared to that of a female baboon in heat.

When she died from a combination of smallpox, alcoholism, and Pleurisy (way to take care of the talent doods) her body was cast, brain and buttocks preserved, vagina dissected, cast, and described in detail by French biologist Georges Cuvier, a man considered to be the father of modern biology.  These items could be viewed in the Musèe de l’Homme in Paris up until the early 1980′s.  Her remains have since been returned to South Africa, but her history still haunts all of us.  It could teach us all a thing or two about rationalization and reasoning.

What’s more interesting is that the scientists who examined Sarah, while living and after death, inadvertently, through their own processes, contradict the very stereotypes, that black women were wild and savage, and possessed uncontrollable sexual desires, they were trying to prove.  Though little is known about Lil’ Sarah’s disposition, the following was recorded while observing her in the Jardin du Roi:

Sarah appears good, sweet and timid, very easy to manage when one pleases her…She appears to have a sense of modesty or at least we had a very difficult time convincing her to allow herself to be seen nude, and she scarcely wished to remove for even a moment the handkerchief with which she hid her organs of generation…[S]he took a dislike to M. de Blainville, probably because he came too near to her, and pestered her in order to obtain material for his description; although she loved money, she refused what he offered her in an effort to make her more docile…she would easily strike someone…

I am thankful for such gaps in logic.  Cracks like these provide the necessary wiggle room to question claims that have been widely accepted,  unknowingly adopted, and are inadvertently passed along.

I like to think of Lil’ Sarah’s story as the origin of black female body dramas.  How can these narratives be reshaped and reclaimed?  Presumably, Lil’ Sarah agreed to become a sideshow attraction for money, but she would not submit herself to the same characterizations, even with the promise of financial gain, while off of the stage.  Is there any greater evidence of her humanity than the presence of such contradictions?  Just how is it that black female sexuality is simultaneously invisible and so very exposed?  And is it just me, or doesn’t all of this look a little too familiar?

Till next time…

Love and Enjoy.

Click here to find the next post in the Between·the·Sheets series.