Booty Battle | CULTURE

"My anaconda don't wan't none unless you got buns, yun" - Sir Mix-a-lot

2014 was the year of many amazing things: Gwen Stefani’s comeback, feminism gone mainstream and, of course, the big booty. On the surface this is great – women are now being praised for their natural curves and, as a woman of colour, it’s about time! But there is a much darker side to our fascination with the gluteus maximus. ‘Skinny bitches’ are being shamed for their petite figures and women have a whole new set of body issues.

Sadly, as a black woman, much of my identity has to do with my body. Throughout history, a black woman’s curves have either been fetishized or frowned upon. Take, for instance, the story of Sarah Baartman. Sarah was a young, black South African woman with a ridiculously large ass (different sources and pictures show that it was indeed massive, but maybe that’s because they weren’t exposed to the bountiful, beautiful posterior of African women so in fact it wasn’t actually that large. I have no idea, but for the sake of this article, her ass was HUGE). Sarah was a member of the Khoisan tribe in South Africa and was exhibited as part of a freak show in the 19th Century. After Baartman died, her genitals were put on display for all to see and then cower in fear of the memory of her immortalised ass. Fast forward to 2014 and Kim Kardashian’s butt is praised worldwide, singers like Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez have made whole songs about big butts, and Vogue has controversially stated that white women have made big butts and curvy figures popular.

Part of this obsession can be traced to the popularisation of twerking, famous women like Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé redefining our idea of beautiful bodies, and, of course, hiphop. All this sounds like good news, but for some reason beauty in the eyes of the media always seems to be onedimensional. Either your body is beautiful or it isn’t. In her song Anaconda, Nicki Minaj goes off on a rant about “skinny bitches” and how pathetic they are in the club. In Meghan Trainor’s annoyingly catchy song All About That Bass, Trainor sings “Boys like a little more booty to hold at night” (as though what men want should determine a woman’s selfesteem), once again shaming petite women. What is ironic is that 2014 was meant to be the year that made feminism mainstream, with campaigns like the Emma Watson-led #HeForShe initiative and powerful women like Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie pledging their allegiance to the movement. Yet women still feel the need to shame other women in order to validate themselves. Society’s ass obsession has caused what I like to call the Booty Battle – fight your body and get the big booty of your dreams at any cost.

According to The Huffington Post, last year there were over 10,000 surgeries done to enhance the shape and size of the gluteus maximus in the US alone, and since then these numbers have risen. Procedures like fat transfers have risen to popularity, with the average procedure costing no less than £1,500 (and that’s considered a bargain). That’s a lot of money to dish out for a big booty, so of course there are cheaper ways to increase the size of your butt. Women like Amber Rose, Beyoncé, and all the Kardashians have undergone corset training. To put it as simply as possible, corset or waist training is the process in which women wear restricting corsets for hours on end, including during workouts, in order to make the waist smaller and the booty bigger. While this is dangerous, women desperate for the Kim Kardashian look but lacking in funds or willpower go a step further and undergo illegal implants. Unqualified surgeons inject substances like silicone, mineral oils, and even cement into the buttocks. These dangerous procedures can lead to amputation, death, and lastly, a terribly misshapen ass – the ultimate nightmare. Last and definitely least are butt pads: as the name implies, women wear padded knickers in order to achieve the required effect.

Reading this, you are probably judging those women and wondering why anyone would put their lives in danger just for a bigger bum. Consider this: every day, women are bombarded with images trying to dictate what beauty is. A study done by Sharon Hayes and University of Central Florida professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, published in the British Journal for Psychology, showed that nearly half of girls aged three to six are already scared of being fat; by the time they’re nine, many of them have been on a diet. The pages of fashion, lifestyle, and tabloid magazines tell women that big butts are beautiful but need to be perfectly rounded and firm. The average woman doesn’t have the time to fit in the right amount of lunges to get a perfect derriere and as the regular woman in the UK is a size 14, expectations of tiny waists and abnormally large hips are virtually impossible without surgical assistance.

Every year, magazines, Hollywood, and advertising continue to uphold a beauty standard that makes it impossible for the average woman to love her body. As a woman with an average posterior, I often find myself unhappy with my body. One minute skinny is in and I look at chocolate, burgers and anything involving bacon with disdain and the next I find myself praying that one day I’ll wake up with an ass twice the size of my own. So, what is a girl supposed to do? Join the booty battle or sing along to her favourite feminist anthem and embrace what she’s got? I think a bit of both, so excuse me while I put on a pair of denim shorts and watch a YouTube twerk tutorial to Beyoncé’s Flawless.

#CULTURE