This Story Is Too Bootylicious for Me

The fascination/fetishization of black women's backsides... will it never end???

From the Associated Press:

A newly discovered horse fly in Australia was so “bootylicious” with its golden-haired bum, there was only one name worthy of its beauty: Beyonce.

Australian researcher Bryan Lessard, 24, says he wanted to pay respect to the insect’s beauty by naming it Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae. Lessard said Beyonce would be “in the nature history books forever” and that the fly now bearing her name is “pretty bootylicious” with its golden backside.

This is not an honor. He is not doing her a favor. In fact, Lessard is evidencing an ongoing, problematic fascination with black women's bottoms. Dr. Janell Hobson, in an essay in which she analyzes "the prevalent treatment of black female bodies as grotesque figures, due to the problematic fetishism of their rear ends," (88) on the history of this bullshit:*

[A] history of enslavement, colonial conquest and ethnographic exhibition-variously labeled the black female body "grotesque," "strange," unfeminine," "lascivious," and "obscene." This negative attitude toward the black female body targets one aspect of the body in particular: the buttocks (87).

Dr. Hobson delves into the longstanding fascination with/assumptions about black women's alleged hypersexuality, a hypersexuality symbolized by our deviant bodies and an "emphasis on the black female rear end, with its historic and cultural tropes of rawness, lasciviousness, and 'nastiness'," (97). And though this history extends much farther than two centuries into the past, she highlights the heartbreaking and dehumanizing display of Saartje Baartman, arguing that "perhaps no other figure epitomizes the connections between grotesquerie, sexual deviance, and posteriors than the 'Hottentot Venus'," (89), put on display primarily for the " 'strange,' singular attraction" of her rear end (88). As crunktastic notedm over at the Crunk Feminist Collective, about Lessard's naming of the fly in Beyonce's "honor," "The legacy of Saartjie Bartmann lives."

Lest you think this is purely a compliment (I say purely because I am sure, in some strange way, Lessard meant it as such), ponder Dr. Hobson's words on Sir MixALot's Baby Got Back:

This so-called "appreciation"of black women's bodies does not necessarily challenge ideas of grotesque and deviant black female sexuality. Interestingly, both the song and video uphold and celebrate the black body precisely because it differs from the standard models of beauty in white culture, (96).

Substitute "the naming of the fly" for "both the song and video."

If you're still leaning towards, "compliment," think of this: The recent "global desirability of a Black girl’s ass" is not complimentary; it grows out of a history of othering and "exotifying" black women's bodies and "excuses her allegedly less desirable dark complexion, full lips, and kinky hair," you know, the still grotesque and "ugly" parts of us.** But the appeal of black women's butts is not always enough to "excuse" our deficiencies/lack of beauty in other categories. In fact, a curvy backside becomes even more desirable when it is not attached to a black woman. As Dr. Hobson notes,

[P]erformer Jennifer Lopez offers a slightly different take on rear-end aesthetics. Her Latina body, already colored as "exotic" in a so-called changing American racial landscape, bridges the desires of black and white men, because she can serve as the "racial other" for both. More importantly Lopez's derriere does not carry the burden of Baartman's legacy.

[snip]

Dominant culture came to celebrate Lopez's behind as part of a recognition of "exotic" and "hot" Latinas, women perceived as "more sexual" than white women but "less obscene" than black women. In this way, Lopez's body avoids the specific racial stigma that clings to black women's bodies (97).

Or, as I read in my Facebook feed the other day,*** part of the adoration/fascination with Kim Kardashian is the desirability of having physical features typically associated with a black woman unencumbered by the history of racism, colonization, and devaluation.

I guess what it boils down to is the naming of this fly as symbolic of a culture of what crunktastic calls "disrespectability politics":

This is a world where disrespectability politics reign, a world where black women’s bodies and lives become the load-bearing wall, in the house that race built, a world where the tacit disrespect of Black womanhood is as American as apple pie, as global as Nike. (Just do it. Everybody else is. ) In this world, Black women have moved from “fly-girls to bitches and hoes” and back again to just, well, flies. Insects. Pests.

Please spare us honors like these, Mr. Lessard.
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* Janell Hobson, "The 'Batty' Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body," Hypatia 18, no. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003): 87-105.

** From this sentence by crunktastic: "In this world, the global desirability of a Black girl’s ass excuses her allegedly less desirable dark complexion, full lips, and kinky hair." I know, I know; someone might argue that full lips are all the rage, but remember they can't be too full and they are much "better" on a non-black woman--hello, world's fascination with Angelina Jolie!

***paraphrased from a note or article posted by one of my friends for which I have searched desperately and cannot find. Please let me know if you know the citation. (Update: Here it is! Hat Tip to checarina at Shakesville, where this is crossposted)

All Up in My Space!

I need some pants. Some for work, some for play, just some damned pants.

I've been in a quandary for the last year though, every since Lane Bryant rolled out their new "Right Fit" sizing. They were all excited, too, with tape measures tossed stylishly around the associates' necks and color- and shape-coded signs. They had my cynical ass all bubbly. Right Fit doesn't come in the sizes I'm used to, so I walked up to an associate and asked how could I find a pair of these "revolutionary," bubbly-elle-making, change-my-life-forever pants in a size that fit? How did the new sizes correspond with the old?

I thought she'd just tell me.

She didn't.

Therein lay the catch.

Apparently, Right Fit is so damned new and unlike-anything-in-the-history-of-fashion that I can't just try to find the size that corresponds.

I have to be measured. In the store. By another person.

That is too much for me. I'll admit that I haven't thrown off the well-instilled practices of not discussing my size (I tell y'all I'm fat but I don't tell you what size I wear, now do I?) and treating my measurements as if they were the combination to a safe at Ft. Knox or something. After a lifetime of that, I've made a lot of progress but I am NOT about to go in a store, fling my arms open, and say, "Measure me, baby!" I imagine a lot of women are hesitant to do so. And it doesn't matter whether we should or shouldn't be, that's just how it is.

Then there's the fact that I don't like people putting their arms around me, especially strangers. Yeah, we can brush cheeks, exchange pecks, give a quick squeeze to acknowledge each other, but a full out, prolonged hug--not my favorite thing. I'm not a touchy sort of person--again, I know a lot of it's related to body image issues. I remember a long time ago, seeing a weight loss commercial in which the mom was in agony over how she had failed as a mom--the proof? Her (very young) child couldn't get her/his arms around mom!! I have never forgotten that and though I thought it was ridiculous, that lingers in the back of my head when people try to hug me. Sad, but true.

So yeah, pants. I need them. I can find the cute specialty ones, but most of the denim and increasingly the career pants are Right Fit. I know there are other stores, but the stuff at Catherine's is not my style and the pants at Avenue always look as if they go with something specific. I'm going to look more the website to see if they'll reveal the secret that is Right Fit sizing.

I am very hesitant to buy clothes online, so that option is (mostly) out.

If not, I just don't know!

Hair Woes

I did something shocking last weekend.

I bought shampoo and conditioner.

Why is this significant? Because I've been taught to not wash my relaxed hair at home, so I never really have shampoo and conditioner.

One of my stylists used to have a sign up warning customers against being "kitchenticians." Another used to complain of clients who attempted something at home, then came crying to her to fix it.

Given my indoctrination into the "Water, Mine Enemy" school of thought, I never wanted to risk garnering the wrath of my stylists or dealing with relaxed hair that doesn't bounce back from home washings.

But I just moved here and I sweated a lot during said move. I haven't found a stylist, but I can't take another minute of my "sour" hair.

It occured to me, not for the first time, that it is a mad, mad world in which we live that women can be convinced that they lack the skills or knowledge to deal with something as simple and personal as our own hair.

Oh, No, the Na-Na!

I've been thinking about my relationship with certain parts of my body. Started with worries over my hair and went from there. Somewhere along this as-yet-unfinished continuum, I began to think about how my vagina* has become this thing that's a part of me, but not. I think it's because, for my whole life, it has been defined as a problem area.

The primary descriptions I got for my vagina as a child were 1) It needs constant tending and 2) It gets you into trouble. When I first began hearing people say that the vaginal area was delicate, I was amazed. My mother and grandmothers taught us that the goal of vaginal cleaning was to erase any scent and to prevent it from coming back for as long as possible. I can't tell you how offensive vaginal odors were deemed; I can tell you that we would've been in trouble had we ignored the extensive hygiene routine. We were taught that our vaginas were smelly and could cause great embarrassment.

So, we did not treat our genitalia delicately. We repeatedly scrubbed with gold Dial until it passed a finger test. My grandmother added brown lysol to our bath water, my mom added bleach. I grew up seeing douches and Norforms in our medicine cabinet and linen closet. We marvelled at the cleanliness of my mom's cousn who mixed a little bleach in her douche. When we were a litle older, my mom suggested we wash with vinegar, which created an even more intensive routine--lather up with the Dial a couple of times, rinse, wash with vinegar, rinse, lather with Dial again to remove vinegar scent. We took two full baths a day and sometimes washed our vaginas in between.

And then there were the dreaded periods. Menstrual blood was nasty, funky, and mandated even more washing. I have a friend whose stepfather required that she and her mom bleach the tub after they bathed when they were menstruating. For us, period days were three bath days--before school, after school, at night, with plenty complaining about how we hated our periods and our vaginas in between.

By the time I was 17, I was douching, spraying FDS, and constantly bathing. I'd also learned to be wary of my vagina because it was a source of trouble in a sexual sense. I was never taught pleasant things about sex, only that my vagina was a pathway for STIs and for pregnancy. To say that I had a complex about sex is an understatement. I entered my 20s worried that I was going to be "punished" with an incurable STI because I was having sex. Oh, I would've never acknowledged that--I knew that was an ignorant, offensive, untrue deduction, but there it was. That didn't just come from my Baptist background--there's only so many times you can go to a public health unit with nurses whose primary concern is stopping you from having sex. Being told to use condoms so "He doesn't shoot you up a load of AIDS"** and repeatedly seeing the pictures of sexual organs with various bumps, sores, and swellings are pretty efficient scare tactics.

Couple the vagina = road-to-trouble with the vagina = smelly training and you get the makings of a sexual dysfunction--how can you enjoy sex when you're sure death lingers around the corner or you don't want your partner to perform oral sex because their nose will be "right there" or you can't have it spontaneously because you don't have sex except straight from the shower? And the "sex bath" is even more intensive than the regular one.

So my life consisted of fear-imposed bouts of celibacy, constant check-ups and testing, and unhealthy cleaning practices.

And then, for my mental and physical well-being, I had to stop. Stop most of the incessant cleaning because my body was rebelling. Stop the fear, because I learned enough and grew enough to reject the "STI = horrible punishment for bad girl."

But I still haven't accepted my vagina as a delicate-but-strong, precious part of me. I haven't fully given up my hygiene routine. I am, at best, ambivalent about sex because I hate worrying about whether or not everything is "just right."

I'm angry, because none of the guys I know were ever given these kinds of lessons about their genitalia. I'm angry because I've been taught to despise such a "womanly" part of myself. And I'm angry at myself because, while I realize this is yet another way women are shamed and taught to feel deficient, I just can't let it all go.
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*I am using "vagina" as an all-encompassing term.
**Yes, a nurse really told my 19-year-old self that. I will never forget that.

They Learn It, Too

I'm a fat girl. Pretty much always have been. I don't spend as much time consciously thinking about it as I once did. The way I am usually affected these days is much more assiduous. I have accepted, for example, that I am sort of invisible. I've seen people that I know from high school and college, people that I've met in other places for more than a moment, and while I remember them, they look right past me. They remember Kim. They remember Mrs. O. But it is if they've never seen me before, and in a very real sense, I suppose they haven't. (continued under the fold)

This is only one example, of course. Suffice it to say, I have grown accustomed to not being seen. Except, when I suddenly become hypervisible. In a restaurant or any place where I might eat. In a grocery store where people not-so-subtly look at the contents of my basket. On buses and vans where I am judged to "take up too much of the seat."

While I might not talk much about my weight, the one thing that I do complain about at length is my stomach. It's not only that I have a fat tummy; I have a somewhat large lipoma on the right side that pushes out a little bit against my clothing so it is sometimes visible. When I'm unclothed, I look at it and think that it distorts my stomach. My doctor told me it was harmless a few years ago, so I didn't worry about it. A couple of years later, he was surprised I still had it. I repeated what he told me. He then said, "I didn't mean for you to walk around with it forever."

My mom tells me every once in a while to have it, and the one under my arm (that I've had for over half my life), removed. When I was in grad school, trying to write, I wondered when I'd have time to take a few weeks to recover. Plus, I don't like going to the doctor's office.

So, I just routinely complain and move on. I notice that I try consciously not to complain in front of the girls in my circle of family and friends. They are aged from six to 17 and the complaints they make are enough to make you cry. In their words, they are too fat, their butts are too flat or too big, their hair is nappy, they are "black" (meaning dark-skinned), and so on. So, while I try to encourage all the children academically, I will admit I especially try to get the girls not to think about themselves in terms of "what's wrong."

But I had this moment a few nights ago when my nephew came to me and said,"Guess what the Kid did when we went swimming today?" "What?" I asked, expecting that he got in a section that was too deep or held someone under water or breached some other example of pool etiquette.

Turns out he went swimming with his shirt on. So I called him in to ask why. And he mumbled to me that he didn't like his stomach because it sticks out a little bit.

Nine-years-old and he doesn't like his stomach. And I know he learned it, in part, from me.