{"id":26086,"date":"2021-07-16T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=26086"},"modified":"2021-07-17T14:34:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T14:34:07","slug":"how-sarah-baartmans-hips-went-from-a-symbol-of-exploitation-to-a-source-of-empowerment-for-black-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-sarah-baartmans-hips-went-from-a-symbol-of-exploitation-to-a-source-of-empowerment-for-black-women\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sarah Baartman\u2019s hips went from a symbol of exploitation to a source of empowerment for Black women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rokeshia Renn\u00e9 Ashley<\/a>, Florida International University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cBLACK EFFECT<\/a>,\u201d a track from Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z\u2019s 2018 collaborative album \u201cEVERYTHING IS LOVE<\/a>,\u201d Beyonc\u00e9 describes a quintessential Black female form:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stunt with your curls, your lips, Sarah Baartman hips\nGotta hop into my jeans like I hop into my whip, yeah\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The celebration of Sarah Baartman\u2019s features marks a departure from her historical image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saartjie \u201cSarah\u201d Baartman<\/a> was an African woman who, in the early 1800s, was something of an international sensation of objectification. She was paraded around Europe, where spectators jeered at her large buttocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With celebrities like Beyonc\u00e9 recognizing Baartman\u2019s contributions to the ideal Black female body \u2013 and with the curvaceous posteriors of Black women lauded on TV and celebrated on social media \u2013 I wanted to understand how this ideal is viewed by the very people it most directly effects: Black women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I interviewed 30 Black women from various cities in South Africa and the mid-Atlantic U.S. and asked them about Baartman<\/a>. Would her image represent a reviled past or a canvas of resilience? Were they proud to bear a similar buttocks or ashamed to share a similar stature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hips and history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Baartman, a Khoisan woman from South Africa, left her native land in the early 1800s for Europe; it\u2019s unclear whether she went willingly or was forced to do so<\/a>. Showmen exhibited her throughout Europe, where, in an embarrassing and dehumanizing spectacle, she was forced to sing and dance before crowds of white onlookers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Often naked in these exhibitions, Baartman was sometimes suspended in a cage on stage while being poked, prodded and groped. Her body was characterized<\/a> as grotesque, lascivious and obscene because of her protruding buttocks, which was due to a condition called steatopygia<\/a> that occurs naturally among people in arid parts of southern Africa. She also had elongated labia, a physical feature derogatorily referred to as a \u201cHottentot apron<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Baartman had a naturally occurring condition called \u2018steatopygia.\u2019 British Museum<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Both became symbolic markers of racial difference, and many other women from this part of Africa were trafficked to Europe for white entertainment<\/a>. Because they diverged so drastically from dominant ideas of white feminine beauty, Baartman\u2019s features were exoticized. Her voluptuous and curvaceous body \u2013 mocked and shamed in the West \u2013 was also described in advertisements<\/a> as the \u201cmost correct and perfect specimen of her race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Baartman ideal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Of course, Black women\u2019s bodies vary; there is no monolithic \u2013 nor ideal \u2013 type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nonetheless, there is a strong legacy of the curvaceous ideal<\/a>, more so than in other races.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It persists to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my interviews, Black women revealed how they felt about Baartman\u2019s story, how they compared her to their own body image and what her legacy represents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One American participant, Ashley, seemed to recognize how entrenched the Baartman ideal has become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Baartman] was the platform for stereotypes,\u201d she said. \u201cShe set the trend for Black women [to] have these figures and \u2026 now these stereotypes are carrying through pop culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mieke, a South African woman, described being proud of her proportions and the way they\u2019re connected to Baartman, saying, \u201cI\u2019m proud of my body because of the resemblance I feel it has with hers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Exploitation or empowerment?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Today, the Baartman body can be advantageous<\/a>, especially on social media, where Black women have the opportunity to produce content that\u2019s socially and culturally relevant to them and their audiences \u2013 and where users can make money off their posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On various platforms, women leverage their looks to obtain paid advertisements or receive free gifts, services or merchandise from various beauty and apparel companies<\/a>. They\u2019re also more likely to gain more followers \u2013 and perhaps attract more wealthy suitors, depending on their ambitions \u2013 by hewing more closely to the contemporary Baartman ideal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you could argue that Black women are taking control of their objectification and commodification to earn money. They\u2019re also protesting the ideals of white mainstream beauty, seizing Baartman\u2019s exploitation and mockery and recasting her as a source of pride and empowerment on places like #BlackTwitter, Instagram and OnlyFans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Baartman\u2019s image is rooted in a legacy that is engulfed by slavery, unwillful submission and colonialism. The white gaze that fetishized Baartman\u2019s body as exotic and overtly sexual was the same one that promulgated the stereotype<\/a> that Black women were sexually promiscuous, lascivious and hypersexual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Baartman may not have been able to keep the cash people paid to ogle at her, Black women today can strive for her body type and make money off it. Once subjected to the mockery of an insidious white gaze, Baartman\u2019s physique is now profitable \u2013 as long as these women are comfortable with being objectified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But is selling this body type always a form of empowerment? Would someone who wasn\u2019t already exploited do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This may explain why Black women today are conflicted when they think about Baartman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lesedi, from South Africa, highlighted this tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel you do find girls like me who are not proud of what they see when they look in the mirror and they just feel like, \u2018I need to drop this off,\u2019\u201d she said. However she added that \u201cyou find other girls that are just so happy about it that they twerk. \u2026 I guess Sarah Baartman definitely does have an influence, but it\u2019s either positive or negative whether you\u2019re proud to have a bum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rokeshia Renn\u00e9 Ashley<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Communication, Florida International University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rokeshia Renn\u00e9 Ashley, Florida International University In \u201cBLACK EFFECT,\u201d a track from Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z\u2019s 2018 collaborative album \u201cEVERYTHING IS LOVE,\u201d Beyonc\u00e9 describes a quintessential Black female form: The celebration of Sarah Baartman\u2019s features marks a departure from her historical image. Saartjie \u201cSarah\u201d Baartman was an African woman who, in the early 1800s, was something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[10192,10191,1710,936,10190,488,1538,702,8223,4638],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26086"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26097,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions\/26097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}