August 13, 2014 • 44 mins
Why do women have larger buttocks than men, and why are they considered attractive? From Hottentot Venus to Instagram's Butt Selfie Queen, Cristen and Caroline get to the bottom of our longstanding cultural fascination with women's big butts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today we were talking about
behind rear ends the Donka donks. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
this was a listener suggested topic and what a fantastic
(00:27):
topic it is, because Caroline, I feel like we are
pop culturally living in a very butastic era. I I
think we are too. Um, you know, we we passed
through the era of Heroin, chic Allah, Kate Moss, and
(00:48):
now we're in the era of Kim Kardashian for instance. Um,
and there's a lot of like videos out there on
how to do your exercises to get your big butt
and things like that, and so you know, well, I
think body acceptance of any kind is wonderful. We really
should look at why how we ended up in this
era of but tastic nous and where all of this
(01:10):
butt worship came from. Yeah, we're really We're just really
in two butts. Um. Side note, you can follow us
on Instagram, by the way, at stuff Mom Never Told You.
And I'm saying that because speaking of Instagram, some listeners
might also follow the so called but selfie Queen jen Selter.
This woman has made a social media empire for herself
(01:34):
solely based on but selfies, Yeah, which are called belfies.
In case you were wondering, that is that is the
point that we were at in terms of our but obsession.
So why don't we first start off with some but science?
That's right? Why do we have but what is a butt?
(01:55):
What is a butt? Anyway? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's
not just a good squishy place to grab onto. It
happens to be a very important muscle that helps stabilize
the hip and help us walk. Now, apes, for instance,
have a really tenny, tiny, puny gluteus maximus that helps
them climb trees, but doesn't really help them stand for
(02:17):
very long. And so I'm wondering if I have more
of an ape butt because I really don't like standing.
Good be Caroline Um. So humans evolved a thicker, more
powerful gluteus maximus that attaches higher on our hip bones,
that offers more leverage and keeps us stable while walking.
And so a question that a lot of evolutionary researchers
(02:41):
have seriously pondered is which came first walking or our butts.
Well funny you should ask Kristen. Physical anthropologist Thomas Grinder
thinks that the butt came second. So based on studies
of how our muscles change and grow. Oh, Grinder thinks
(03:01):
that the butt came after the whole walking and standing
things because our rear ends do make it too hard
for apes to walk. We along with our big butts,
we have also a shorter iski um I think it's pronounced.
It's the part of like our rear ends that we
sit on. And so that whole shorter isk um bigger
(03:23):
butt thing would make it too hard for apes to
get around. So yeah, so we have butts to allow
us to walk, and we cannot lie. We can, we
cannot lie. I know it's going to be very hard
to resist making a horrible number of sir, mix a
lot puns throughout this podcast, But I promise you this, listeners,
I will try my best not to I can't make
(03:43):
the same promise. But one, but one thing that we
have to also talk about regarding butts is a question
of hair. This was one another evolutionary question that caught
my eye while we're searching for this episode, which is
why do we still have hair between our butt cheeks,
(04:04):
because it seems like, you know, not not a lot
of people are super jazzed on it. It's not like, oh, yeah,
I have a super hairy but how fantastic. Um so,
why didn't we, in our process of shedding our fur,
also shed that, let's just say it butt crack for
The answer is essentially because it didn't exert enough selective
(04:27):
pressure for humans to have to evolve to deal with it. So,
putting that in plane speak, we were still able to
have sex and reproduce with our but crack hair, which
I really don't like saying I can tell, I can
tell no. But basically, like you know, you can fake hairlessness,
(04:52):
and so you know, if your partner prefers to reproduce
with someone who is hairless, you can fake that, and
you're harry jeans will sneak right through into your children.
That sounds weird, but um it's It's kind of like
when we talked about men having nipples. It's kind of
the same thing. There was no reason to evolutionarily select
(05:12):
against it. Yeah, they're like, oh, yeah, that's fine. Just
keep your nipples and keep the hair in between your
butt cheeks. Keep that crack warm. You're gonna have sex anyway,
that's right. So evolution so complex and yet so simple. Um.
But then when we get into women and butts, because
that will be the focus of this episode, is particularly
the female butt because, in case you haven't noticed, women
(05:34):
tend to have larger, rounder, more fantastically but tacular, but
to the point that it's actually a female secondary sex straight.
So why would women have bigger butts? It's all hormones, Baby,
Estrogen encourages fat storage in our rear ends testosterone meanwhile
(05:58):
discourages fat story ridge there. Yeah, but why Caroline, why
would those hormones even do that? Evolutionary psychologists think that.
Yet again, evolution so complex and yet so simple. They
think that our lady butts perhaps evolved to signal youth
and fertility, which then leads to sex propagation of the species. Right, Like, Hey,
(06:23):
look at my butt. I can sustain a pregnancy. Yeah,
I'm very fertile. Look how big my pelvis must be
through which I will pass a human child. I have
a very healthy butt. So you want to take me
to dinner or what? That's right, cave man, take me
to dinner. Um, But in ninetive, there was a theory
(06:44):
that the female buttocks developed to be so large as
it is in order to prevent copulation from behind. Yeah.
By creating the large butt of According to this theory,
which has been called into question, it promoted face to
(07:05):
face sex just like the missionaries. Yeah. And attached to
this theory is that breasts meanwhile developed, you know, obviously,
female breasts much larger than mail breath developed as a
sort of front butt, essentially to again promote face to
face sex, to transfer the butt attraction from our backsides
(07:29):
to our front sides. Which side note this leads to
and I'm not trying to be crassier listeners, This leads
to a question often raised especially in heterosexual dating schema,
are you a breast guy or a butt guy? All
goes back to evolution. But like I said, that theory
(07:52):
has been called into question, and in fact, there is
a more recent theory that says that breasts and butts,
which are essentially you know, these these fat storage areas
on our bodies really developed to store fat during periods
of lactation and or food shortage. In the super hot
and dry climate east of the African Rift Valley, where
(08:15):
the earliest humans evolved. Interesting, there's also if if we're
talking about more modern theories, there's also a study in
the Journal of Obesity that associated bigger butts and thighs
with better health. Now, a lot of people, a lot
of researchers have questioned the validity of this, but these
(08:35):
particular researchers say that lower body fat has a striking
protective role in terms of having fewer heart attacks and
less instances of diabetes. They argue that the fat in
your butt and in your thighs is more stable than
belly fat, uh, therefore causing fewer fatty contents to circulate
(08:56):
throughout the body. So and then that would jive with
the evolutionary psychology thinking that women have bigger butts as
a way to signal our health and fertility and readiness
to make a baby with a with a special someone,
special someone. Indeed, and speaking of special someone's, we've got
(09:18):
to talk about the idea that straight guys when they
look at women, are either a boobman or a buttman.
And there have been studies on this. I was rather
excited to find there's a two thousand study titled perception
of female buttocks in breast size in profile. And this
was an interesting one because it included not only men
(09:39):
but also women and essentially just showed them profiles of
women's bodies and sort of played around with the size
of breasts and buttocks, and they found that the buttocks
size had no effect on attractiveness ratings. It was only
when they manipulated breast size that they saw relationship to
(10:03):
attractiveness ratings. Right. Um, some they did say, like towards
the end of the end of the study that the
fact that these study results were slightly different from other
like silhouettes studies were that apparently some of the silhouettes
they showed people were like so different from the other
silhouettes that they think it is possible that people just
(10:23):
picked the silhouette that they considered to be quote unquote
more normal or you know, like something that's not quite
as exaggerated, not necessarily that people prefer a smaller bus
or a bigger bus, etcetera. Well, and in terms of
real world application of that, it's not like we're walking around,
you know, like men just see the like silhouettes just
(10:44):
walking down the sidewalks. I do wonder it's like when
you see methodologies like that, you wonder how much credence
you can really give to them. Um. So there was
another study in two thousand twelve in the Archives of
Sex Behavior that compared men's reported but or breast preference
(11:06):
with their eye gaze. So this this was a little
bit different methodology, and they found that, guess what, men
tended to be more into butts, not only self reporting,
but also when they did the eye gazing. So they
use eye tracking technology um on the male participants and
then showed them, you know, a lovely a lovely lady,
(11:28):
and tracked where their eyes went either to the butt
or the breasts, and with a guy said he was
a butt guy. He looked at the butt. Interesting, Well
I'm a butt woman. Okay. Yeah, this is something that
is not addressed in research at all. I think just
because we tend to associate the butt obsession more with
(11:48):
straight guys. But I specifically remember, for some reason as
a child, watching say, by the Bell Kelly and Kelly A.
Palaski commenting on the key noess of Zack Morris's but
like and then the audience laugh and I'm like, oh
that's funny. What does that mean? So so you're you're
a butt woman. I am a but woman. And and
(12:10):
and it's I don't just require like a bubbly baseball player,
but to grab onto like I like butts of all
sizes on guys. Oh you're you're kind of a butt anthropologist. Yeah,
I'm going through the forest in my khakis with my
little explorer hat, just like poking poking people's butt these
a little poking stick. Yeah. There's also the fact too
that men's rears are eroticized in gay context obviously, right,
(12:37):
I mean in the same way that people talk about, Oh,
a woman's butt is close to her sexual organs, so
it is taboo. I mean, if you're like Victorian or whatever. Um,
and it's the same. It's the same kind of discussion
that goes on around gayman. But unfortunately, there has not
been research, at least that I found on mail to
mail but attraction. So if there are any researchers listening,
(12:59):
I would like a study on that. So we've covered
now some of the evolution, the science, the psychology of
but attraction. But now we have to get into the
cultural history of our fascination and fetishization of large butts
(13:20):
in particular, and warning it is kind of horrifying, So
brace yourself for that, and we'll get into that when
we come right back from a quick break. So in
our cultural history of the buttocks, we're really going to
(13:42):
focus in on the nineteenth century because that is when
this fetishization of large butts in particular really picks up.
But first we just want to provide a brief timeline
of our collective interest in women's rear ends right, and
(14:03):
women's shape in general. If you're talking about the Venus
of Vinendorf uh from twenty four thousand BC. This is
a figure you've probably seen in textbooks, history, textbooks or whatever.
You know. She's a she's a carved figuring whose features
are incredibly exaggerated, but the focus is her rather large
buttocks and thighs. She symbolizes fertility, all of that good stuff. Yeah,
(14:27):
and she's one of the oldest known pieces of artwork.
So that's why you hear Venus of Villendorff brought up
all the time. So, jumping way way forward in time
into the Victorian era, which is when this kind of
reinfascination really takes a fascinating, splash, horrifying turn, we have
Havelock Ellis who was a physician, sexual psychologist and a
(14:50):
eu genesist who in his series of books The Studies
on the Psychology of Sex, describes the butt, the female
butt as highly fed, wishized, and fetishized. It was indeed
also in the sex lives of Victorian era Britain's that's right.
(15:10):
Spanking was a hugely popular erotic act in Victorian Great
Britain and it was a major feature of pornography around
this time. For instance, there was the erotica of the
era called lady bum Ticklers revels Lady bum Ticklers revels um.
(15:31):
It was described as popularly consumed spanking bass to Victorian erotica, Wow,
talk about spanking bass. So it was just like the
fifty Shades of gray Um. Well, no, of course we
have to get into Freud, because no discussion of history
and sexuality and psychology is completely without bringing up Freud.
(15:55):
He talks about the anal phase that, in his line,
was the root of gay sexual orientation. He said that
successful adults have to pass through three phases oral, anal,
and genital, and he said that if you were anal
retentive and you were stuck in that phase, that you
were not only controlling and uptight, but that you had
(16:16):
a lot of unresolved issues around your butt and hence
he said, oh, and then you would also be gay
because of that. So that's where that comes from. So
of course, also that paints being gay as some kind
of disorder, right, good old Freud, Good old Freud. So
we'll we'll leave him in the anal phase behind and
(16:38):
jump forward to more recent history, because from the nineteen
seventies on this is when we really start to see
the female behind being celebrated so much and obsessed over
so much in pop culture. So in the seventies you
have a guy named Ego Patangi who developed one of
(16:59):
the first widely used but lift procedures. It's worth noting
he was Brazilian, okay, um, yeah, because you know Brazilian
women also known for having larger rear ends, and so
that's when we start going under the knife in order
to get a Brazilian like rear end. It's right, and
people do still use elements of that early butt lift procedure.
(17:23):
So yeah, but let's still happen. I should have pulled
up statistics on how many people get butt lifts each year.
I I read in one of these sources that there
were only only uh six hundred performed in the US
in two thousand five. All Right, I don't know what
that how that compares to any other year or any
other country however, but if we're still in the nineteen seventies,
(17:45):
we can't leave out one of my favorite karaoke songs,
which is Queen's Fat Bottom Girls, which comes out in
nineteen and then leap forward, that's when Sir Mix a
Lot comes out with Baby Got Back. And we could
actually spend an entire podcast digging into the lyrics of
(18:06):
Baby Got Back. Well, yeah, because in the song in
the beginning, it's two white valley girls talking about a
black woman's rear end. Yeah, and and in not so
nice terms, which is going to tie completely into uh,
what we're about to talk about from the Victorian era. So,
but going back to the nineties, in the late nineties,
(18:27):
you see more women seeking but implants and this is
termed the j Low effect. And we'll get back to
Jennifer Lopez later on in the show, because she was
actually very important in terms of sort of bringing our
rear end obsession into mainstream pop culture because she was
(18:48):
this breakout Latina star, which was, as we'll get into,
more significant because she was an African American. She was
not white. She was sort of in middling a Latina. Yeah,
and it's interesting to watch, like as culture shifts and
changes and as body types come in and out of vogue,
which is so ridiculous because it's bodies like whatever. Because
(19:10):
this one source that we were looking at talks about
someone like Janet Jackson who maybe earlier in her career,
you know, she had this rear end. She talked about
how her brother Michael teased her for it, and you
know it was kind of like her butts big and weird.
But as you move forward in time and you have
things like the breakout of Latin pop music in our culture,
(19:34):
people like j Lo who has an unapologetically awesome curvy figure,
then suddenly it's okay for Janet Jackson to sort of
trade on her rear end. And so then in two
thousand one you have Destiny's Child coming out with their
hit Bootylicious, And from there we get back into our
episode long ago on Beyonce because her body has talked
(19:56):
about endlessly. In one feature of her body that is
paid a lot of close attention to is her but right,
And then yeah, that catches us up to people like
Kim Kardashian, who I mean, cud all, that's like that.
You know, I don't not poor Kim because you know,
I'm sure she's doing fine and she's totally happy with
(20:17):
the attention her but gets. But like cheez, you see
tabloid pictures of like, look at what she used to
look like. She had a quote unquote normal butt and
now look at it. Yeah, but if you look at
it's kind of like jen selter the the Instagram but
selfie queen. If you look at Kim Kardashian's Instagram or
her selfies, she I think she's very proud of her.
(20:38):
But she's building a lot of her career I think
from her. But her butt is a lovely foundation. So
now we're going to get into a not so lovely
foundation of our interests or cultural interest and attraction to
large butts in particular. And so we have to talk
(21:00):
out a person who deserves far more attention. In our history,
our name was Sarkee Bartman, but better known as Hot
and taught Venus. So during the age of European exploration,
it's interesting that this episode is coming out so soon
after we did our series on women and Exploration, because
(21:21):
this is sort of the not so pleasant back end
of all of the exploration going on, and exploration particularly
into Africa, and what we're termed excessive buttocks were used
to categorize indigenous people, particularly in Africa, as primitive, which
was then used to justify their enslavement and or forced
(21:44):
subjugation via colonialism. And it was so much this focus
on their behind right, and and judging their bodies as
ugly as other instead of the beautiful, slim, slender europe
And body shape which was considered beautiful and accepted and normal.
Importantly that that did it did justify the other ing
(22:08):
of the peoples of Africa. And why the attention on
the buttocks, Like you mentioned earlier in the podcast Caroline,
during the Victorian era, there was so much obsession with
the butt as taboo because it is so close to
our genitals, and so there was this highly racist idea
(22:29):
that these so called excessive buttocks of indigenous African people
were really signs not only of them being primitive, but
also of having exaggerated sexuality right, and so in England
during this time. Remember this is like we talked about
in our Explore episodes. This is kind of the golden
age of exploration when men and some women are setting
(22:51):
out to learn about the world around them, but they're
not always looking through very clear lenses at the people
who live in the places they're visiting. So England is
in flux during this time between a period of looking
at people different people, different cultures as the noble Savages,
to looking at it through a lens of ethnology, or
(23:13):
more commonly the branch of anthropology that examines differences between
groups of people. And this also ties into the part
in our Explorer series discussing how as exploration is going on,
this is when scientific fields are really starting to be professionalized.
There's a big focus on that, and so within that
you have this focus on ethnology, which really starts to
(23:37):
become a racialized form of science, using what they thought
of as science at the time to prove that people
with different skin colors are inferior in X y Z
kind of ways. And so this brings us to Sarki Bartman,
known as HoTT and taught Venus and hottent taught is
(24:00):
I don't even like saying it on the podcast, because
it's actually a derogatory term. Um. The word HoTT and
tot was derived from the clicking sound of the Coison dialect,
and the Coison are an ethnic group from the Cape
of South Africa, and so when these Dutch men came
in and they heard this dialect, they assumed that they
(24:22):
were just speaking nonsense because again like very limited and
not so clear lens through which they're seeing these people,
and so they refer to them as the HoTT and
tot and one of them captured and enslaved this woman,
Sarky Bartman, and then ended up taking her to London
(24:43):
to put her on display, because this is also the
era of freak shows in London, and so he's like, oh, well,
I've got an idea. We're gonna take this HoTT and
toot venus, which is a derogatory combination of HoTT and
tot and also the venous aspect because her rear was
so large, her butt was so quote unquote excessive, and
(25:07):
thus leading into the idea that that excessive buttocks signaled
her exaggerated sexuality, which is where the venus part comes in, right,
and author Rachel Holmes wrote African Queen The Real Life
of the Hot and Tot Venus and talks about what
happened to Sarky when she was on display in front
of people when they took her to London, and she
(25:32):
was put on display in order to do suggestive quote
unquote native dancing and play African instruments. If that's not
bad enough, she was forced to wear a bedazzled cod
piece that was meant to imply to the audience gaping
at her that she had elongated labia. And this is
what is known as the quote unquote Hot and Tot apron,
(25:54):
which is just mind blowing, yeah, because there was this
idea that, if you know, someone with such a large
butt must also have such a large volva, and people
were oddly obsessed with that image. And so you you
saw her during this time, you saw her a lot
(26:16):
lampooned in cartoons of the day, and she even appeared
on the Five of Clubs on a deck of playing
cards in eighteen eleven. And in Holmes's book, she sort
of tries to paint Sarky as having some shread of
agency and this whole thing, even though it's I think
Holmes is taking a little bit of literary license with that,
(26:38):
because she claims that Holmes was complicit in going on exhibit.
And the one though she read of agency she did
clearly have was that she refused, even though she was
asked many times, she refused to ever reveal her volva right, yes,
(26:58):
and well until after her death. And obviously she did
not consent to that. But she died penniless at twenty
six and Napoleon surgeon general and the famed anatomist George
Cuvier dissected her. He put her body parts on display
at the French Museum of Natural History. This includes her brain,
(27:20):
and this includes her lady a, and this includes her
skeleton and a cast of her rear end. And at
the time this was heralded as you know, a great
scientific undertaking, because oh finally we can you know, under
the guise of ethnology and anatomy, these these emerging fields
at the time, Oh well, we can take this specimen,
(27:42):
as she was considered not a person, just a specimen
and really find out how her brain and body and
labia compared to that of white people, and so we
can then draw racist conclusions from that. And this was
I think Janelle Hobson, who has written extensively on Sarki
(28:03):
Bartman wrote his thesis, which compared Bartman's genitalia to those
of Ringatangs, formed the basis for much of the nineteenth
century scientific racism, which later evolved into eugenics. Right, So
it's it's mind blowing a that this was even happening,
but that this important figure in history has been almost lost. Yeah. Well,
(28:31):
what's even crazier about this scenario is that Nelson Mandela
demanded that her remains be returned to South Africa, and
it was not until two thousand two that France finally agreed, right,
because in the seventies, the French Museum of Natural History
was finally like, okay, we won't put her parts on
(28:53):
display for the general public, but we're going to keep them. Nonetheless,
and when they were going back and forth with the
South African government, France was saying, well, we don't want
to give her back because then if we give that back,
then we're going to have to give so many other things.
But it's a person. She was a person, Yeah, I
(29:16):
mean that. And it apparently took until two thousand two
for Europe to recognize that. And so what scholar Janelle
Hobson has done in studying Sarki Bartman is looking at
how hot and taught Venus sort of set the stage
for the lingering fetishization of particularly African American women's butts,
(29:43):
right because Uh, butts were already fetishized, like we talked
about and uh they were totally taboo, and that was
just among Europeans. And then you add the element of
this woman from Africa that they bring over and literally
put on display, and suddenly there is this fear, this
very like gender based, race based fear of someone else's
(30:05):
sexuality as other and dangerous. Yeah, I mean it ties
into so many different problematic issues because one thing about
this is that her large buttocks sarkeys were pathologized as
something called state apesia. So essentially it was this made
up condition that a lot of European doctors said, oh,
(30:29):
these African women all suffer from state apesia because they
have quote excessive buttocks. And she was exhibited as quote
the most correct and perfect specimen of her race, thus
emphasizing the primitive, grotesque, and hyper sexual nature of the
African people's which leads to so many harmful stereotypes that
(30:54):
still exist today, right, and and the fact that then
that influences how Victorian Europeans saw black men, African men,
as they were just being associated with the wild and
other nous of black women's bodies. Yeah, And so Hobson
talks about how Bartmann being a woman made a huge
(31:15):
difference in the Victorian context because this is also the
time when women, by virtue of being women, were considered
the foundation of a group's morality. This is when you
have the era of you know, the cult of domesticity,
where women are considered, you know, the ones who essentially
(31:35):
reign in men's immorality. And so if you have such
a lascivious woman, as demonstrated by her quote unquote excessive
buttocks and her statopesia, and then you have men who
are attracted to that, well how horrifying, right, Well, yeah, exactly,
(31:56):
And and it was horrifying for them to the point
that white women, if we're looking just at European women,
were considered or associated with prostitution if they themselves had
large fear ends. Yeah, yeah, I mean that that is
how sexualized the butt had become, and there were fears
of white men being attracted to large butts as well.
(32:19):
There was even a French vaudeville play called the Hottentot
Venus or Hatred of French Women, in which an aristocrat
woman must save her cousin from a savage hotton dot.
Oh goodness. Yeah, and so there's all this fear around
large fear ends, and what that means, and how sexual
(32:39):
and and devan it is. And yet in the eighteen
seventies Victorian women start wearing bustles. Yeah, this was something.
And if there are any costume or fashion historians listening,
please right in to let me know if you have
any insight on this, because I wasn't able to. There's
not a lot of focus on the history of the bustle,
(32:59):
as ventially the crinoline style, where you have to think
of like the hoop skirts, the giant hoop skirts fell
out of style, and so they start wearing these posterior,
exaggerating bustles. And while I couldn't find any fashion historian
who put the two together, all almost all of the
(33:20):
historians looking at Sarky Bartman put the two together saying that, huh,
it might not necessarily be because of her. Obviously they
would not be directly emulating her. But clearly there was
some kind of appropriation of that big behind happening within
this more upper class, white, luxurious context. It's funny that
(33:45):
you should say appropriation, Kristen, because that is a word
that comes up a lot when you talk about people
like Jen Selter, the but selfie Queen, the fact that
she has become so famous for essentially explaying for being
a white woman displaying a feature that people associate with
(34:06):
black women. And don't get us wrong, We're not trying
to say that Gen Selter appropriated a butt. You know,
there are plenty of white women and women of all
sorts of ethnicities that naturally have large butts. It's simply
when we look at this fetishization of larger rear ends
in more contemporary context, it is a question of why,
(34:28):
oh why do we all want large butts now that
you know, we see a Gen's shelter or we see
a Kim Kardashian with one. And then you have bloggers
like Kareema Towns at Think Progress and Brittany Daniel at
Clutch who were basically talking about the fact that features
that society associates with black women are not okay until
(34:50):
a white woman. Then introduces them to the culture, and
then it's like, oh, well, this is a trend, now
this is cool. Well, there is a step along the
way to that that Jenelle Hopson talks about, which is
in a big way in the late nineties j Lo.
Because what's fascinating about j Lo's rise is that she
was first kind of brought up in hip hop culture,
(35:14):
but then she becomes more popular in white pop mainstream.
And so Hobson talks about how through her less culturally deviant,
though still sexualized Latina body I'll see also our episode
on Exotic Beauty that it then begins the normalization process.
(35:36):
And so then fast forward to the two thousand fourteen
Vanity Fair spread of jen Selter showing off her butt,
which elicited you know, Karema towns that think progress saying,
whoa what, what's going on here? Yeah? Exactly. And now
that there's anything at all wrong with jen Selter or
j Lo or Kim Kardashian or whoever, like wanting to
(35:59):
take belfies but selfies or showing off their butt or
anything like that, it's just the fact that there's there's
a lot of history behind the behind that is just
ignored Yeah, butts are a loaded topic. And that's not
a pun at all in any way, but it's it's
(36:20):
it's interesting to look at how, you know, you might
pride yourself on your rear end of whatever shape it
is and size, but the fact that there's so much
meaning behind all of that, and and how society has
viewed it over the centuries well, and how it has
tied into how society, white society in particular has portrayed
(36:43):
black women. I mean, really, what it boils down to
is that, you know, if if you want a history
of you know, why white black women have historically been
hyper sexualized, you go back to Sarkey Bartman, and it
all seems to start there because then is linked to,
(37:05):
you know, this idea of African people being primitive and
over sexualized and and essentially inferior. But I do hope that,
via Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, etcetera, etcetera, that hopefully we are
in an era where I mean, we can just maybe
(37:26):
embrace a big butt for what it is, you know,
I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with people
being attracted to butts, or finding big butts delightful or
or dancing with their big butt. I'm basically saying to
working you know what I mean, Like, maybe are we
in a new era of of but pride or are
(37:46):
we simply recycling old fetishizations. Well, maybe we are, maybe
we're not. I think that like a lot of things
we talked about on the podcast, you know, like butts
or don't like butts, small butts, big butts, whatever. But
I think it's important to be aware of the way
you are talking about other women's butts, whether you yourself
(38:06):
or male or female. Yeah, and the assumptions that we
make about someone based on her but because I do
still think that happens a lot. That was one thing
Hobson also talked about was how at the two thousand
two US Open, Serena Williams wore this body suit and
it put her, you know, but was very much on display.
(38:27):
She has a large butt and people would not shut
up about it, right, And when I was reading that,
I was like, God, you know, if this were a um,
very slim figured white woman wearing some type of body
suit like that, would they have freaked out as much
as they did when Serena Williams wore it. Serena Williams,
(38:48):
who was African American. All of the body politics that
goes along with African American women's bodies. I mean, it's
it's layered. Well, speaking of bodies, this reminded me that
a couple of days ago, in fact, the ESPN magazine
Body Issue, their annual Body issue, came out and they
did I think it's like six different covers and the
(39:11):
two featuring a woman on the cover. One is I
don't know her name, oh, a white female athlete, blonde,
and it's the cover shot is very face forward and
she's holding her breasts and it's just waste up. Serena
Williams is on the other one and it's her profile shot.
All of the athletes on all the covers are naked,
by the way, and it's Serena Williams profile shot emphasizing
(39:35):
her butt. And I don't and she's seeming in a
in a pose of pride. I don't think it's anything,
you know. I think she's she's proud of her but
so maybe I don't know. It's just interesting that, like
you see the white woman and it's like holding her
boobs and then Serena showing her butt. So maybe it
maybe it is a bet pride. I don't know. I
(39:56):
need listeners to share what they think is going on. Yeah,
I hope this was enlightening, though I know it was
super enlightening for me. This was a really interesting topic,
if I do say so myself. Yeah, I mean, I
will not look at a but the same way ever again.
I will not grab a butt the same way ever again,
ever again. And once you do, once you make contact,
(40:19):
you have to at least about one fact on this podcast,
just think about the politics of what you're doing, folks.
So with that, we want to hear from folks about
your butt, other people's butts. What are all of your
thoughts on butts? Do you think we are in an
era of but pride or is there still a lot
of fetishization at work? Let us know mom Stuff at
(40:42):
how stuffworks dot Com is our email address, and you
can also message us on Facebook or tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast. And we have a couple of non
but related messages to share with you right now. Okay, Well,
I have a letter here from our social media buddy Sarah,
who was writing us about our women's tennis episode. She says,
(41:07):
as a high school and college tennis player. I thought
I knew all about the history of tennis, but was
excited to learn more. I especially liked you addressing the
obvious sexism in coverage of female tennis players and the
emphasis on their looks. It immediately made me think of
the controversy between Wimbledon Women's singles champion Marian Bartoli and
BBC presenter John Inverdale. Inverdale commented on Bartoli's looks shortly
(41:32):
after she won, saying do you think Bartoli's dad told
her when she was little, You're never going to be
a looker, You'll never be a Sharapova, so you have
to be scrappy and fight. Bar totally commented back that
she wasn't blonde, never dreamed of a modeling contract, but
did dream of winning Wimbledon, and that she was proud
of her accomplishments. Of course, after Inverdale's comments, Twitter erupted
(41:56):
with comments about his looks and the overt sexism, as
Inverdale may no comments about Wimbledon Men's singles champion Andy Murray.
She says love the podcast. I just recently discovered it
and have been listening to old episodes NonStop on my
commute to work. Well, thank you Sarah for listening, and
welcome to the podcast. Well, I've got an email here
(42:16):
from Rachel about our episode on body shaming from a
little while back. She writes, I recently had to revisit
my feelings on the subject when I started dating my
current boyfriend, who is a competitive cyclist. His world is
very centered on fitness, and I've caught hints of body
shaming in his vernacular and in the conversations he has
with other cyclists. Keeping a low body weight is very
(42:39):
important to a cyclist because of power to weight ratio
and for the overall performance of an endurance athlete like
you two. I used to assume that body shaming was
a gendered experience that heavily affects women, but through my boyfriend,
I have a chance to witness men experiencing it. But
under the guise of fitness for cycling. I assume that
men don't want to be seen as insecure here or
(43:00):
even womanly in their weight concerns, so they couch their
weight commentary in cyclist terms like leaning out or peeking
for a race. Instead of saying getting fat, they'll say
losing fitness, and rather than go on the defense, describing
the life circumstances that prevented them from keeping up their
regimen to justify that perceived moral failing of gaining weight.
(43:21):
A hilarious conversation I overheard between my boyfriend and a
cyclist friend went down like this, Hey, do you need
a smaller medium jersey? I'm still small? Oh. I decided
check because I know you haven't ridden for a while.
I thought you might need a medium jersey nowe m
for muff and top. According to my boyfriend, these conversations
are very normal and it's just considered friendly banter between athletes,
(43:43):
meant to keep each other in check and have a
bit of fun. I think body insecurities are universal experience
that manifests itself in so many different ways, but it's
just more heavily veiled for boys. To me, almost feels
as though insecurity is for girls and overblown confidence is
for boys. So thanks for those observations, Rachel, and I'm
(44:03):
going to make myself an Emma's for Muffin Top T
shirt like that. It only comes in medium. That's it. Well,
if you would like an Emmas for a Muffin Top
T shirt or would like to share your thoughts with
us on anything else Mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com is our email address, or if you want
to get in touch with us via social links to
all of that stuff, including this podcast with all of
(44:26):
its source links. If you want to read more about
the history of Sarkympartment, which I highly recommend, there's one
place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never Told You
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today we were talking about
behind rear ends the Donka donks. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
this was a listener suggested topic and what a fantastic
(00:27):
topic it is, because Caroline, I feel like we are
pop culturally living in a very butastic era. I I
think we are too. Um, you know, we we passed
through the era of Heroin, chic Allah, Kate Moss, and
(00:48):
now we're in the era of Kim Kardashian for instance. Um,
and there's a lot of like videos out there on
how to do your exercises to get your big butt
and things like that, and so you know, well, I
think body acceptance of any kind is wonderful. We really
should look at why how we ended up in this
era of but tastic nous and where all of this
(01:10):
butt worship came from. Yeah, we're really We're just really
in two butts. Um. Side note, you can follow us
on Instagram, by the way, at stuff Mom Never Told You.
And I'm saying that because speaking of Instagram, some listeners
might also follow the so called but selfie Queen jen Selter.
This woman has made a social media empire for herself
(01:34):
solely based on but selfies, Yeah, which are called belfies.
In case you were wondering, that is that is the
point that we were at in terms of our but obsession.
So why don't we first start off with some but science?
That's right? Why do we have but what is a butt?
(01:55):
What is a butt? Anyway? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's
not just a good squishy place to grab onto. It
happens to be a very important muscle that helps stabilize
the hip and help us walk. Now, apes, for instance,
have a really tenny, tiny, puny gluteus maximus that helps
them climb trees, but doesn't really help them stand for
(02:17):
very long. And so I'm wondering if I have more
of an ape butt because I really don't like standing.
Good be Caroline Um. So humans evolved a thicker, more
powerful gluteus maximus that attaches higher on our hip bones,
that offers more leverage and keeps us stable while walking.
And so a question that a lot of evolutionary researchers
(02:41):
have seriously pondered is which came first walking or our butts.
Well funny you should ask Kristen. Physical anthropologist Thomas Grinder
thinks that the butt came second. So based on studies
of how our muscles change and grow. Oh, Grinder thinks
(03:01):
that the butt came after the whole walking and standing
things because our rear ends do make it too hard
for apes to walk. We along with our big butts,
we have also a shorter iski um I think it's pronounced.
It's the part of like our rear ends that we
sit on. And so that whole shorter isk um bigger
(03:23):
butt thing would make it too hard for apes to
get around. So yeah, so we have butts to allow
us to walk, and we cannot lie. We can, we
cannot lie. I know it's going to be very hard
to resist making a horrible number of sir, mix a
lot puns throughout this podcast, But I promise you this, listeners,
I will try my best not to I can't make
(03:43):
the same promise. But one, but one thing that we
have to also talk about regarding butts is a question
of hair. This was one another evolutionary question that caught
my eye while we're searching for this episode, which is
why do we still have hair between our butt cheeks,
(04:04):
because it seems like, you know, not not a lot
of people are super jazzed on it. It's not like, oh, yeah,
I have a super hairy but how fantastic. Um so,
why didn't we, in our process of shedding our fur,
also shed that, let's just say it butt crack for
The answer is essentially because it didn't exert enough selective
(04:27):
pressure for humans to have to evolve to deal with it. So,
putting that in plane speak, we were still able to
have sex and reproduce with our but crack hair, which
I really don't like saying I can tell, I can
tell no. But basically, like you know, you can fake hairlessness,
(04:52):
and so you know, if your partner prefers to reproduce
with someone who is hairless, you can fake that, and
you're harry jeans will sneak right through into your children.
That sounds weird, but um it's It's kind of like
when we talked about men having nipples. It's kind of
the same thing. There was no reason to evolutionarily select
(05:12):
against it. Yeah, they're like, oh, yeah, that's fine. Just
keep your nipples and keep the hair in between your
butt cheeks. Keep that crack warm. You're gonna have sex anyway,
that's right. So evolution so complex and yet so simple. Um.
But then when we get into women and butts, because
that will be the focus of this episode, is particularly
the female butt because, in case you haven't noticed, women
(05:34):
tend to have larger, rounder, more fantastically but tacular, but
to the point that it's actually a female secondary sex straight.
So why would women have bigger butts? It's all hormones, Baby,
Estrogen encourages fat storage in our rear ends testosterone meanwhile
(05:58):
discourages fat story ridge there. Yeah, but why Caroline, why
would those hormones even do that? Evolutionary psychologists think that.
Yet again, evolution so complex and yet so simple. They
think that our lady butts perhaps evolved to signal youth
and fertility, which then leads to sex propagation of the species. Right, Like, Hey,
(06:23):
look at my butt. I can sustain a pregnancy. Yeah,
I'm very fertile. Look how big my pelvis must be
through which I will pass a human child. I have
a very healthy butt. So you want to take me
to dinner or what? That's right, cave man, take me
to dinner. Um, But in ninetive, there was a theory
(06:44):
that the female buttocks developed to be so large as
it is in order to prevent copulation from behind. Yeah.
By creating the large butt of According to this theory,
which has been called into question, it promoted face to
(07:05):
face sex just like the missionaries. Yeah. And attached to
this theory is that breasts meanwhile developed, you know, obviously,
female breasts much larger than mail breath developed as a
sort of front butt, essentially to again promote face to
face sex, to transfer the butt attraction from our backsides
(07:29):
to our front sides. Which side note this leads to
and I'm not trying to be crassier listeners, This leads
to a question often raised especially in heterosexual dating schema,
are you a breast guy or a butt guy? All
goes back to evolution. But like I said, that theory
(07:52):
has been called into question, and in fact, there is
a more recent theory that says that breasts and butts,
which are essentially you know, these these fat storage areas
on our bodies really developed to store fat during periods
of lactation and or food shortage. In the super hot
and dry climate east of the African Rift Valley, where
(08:15):
the earliest humans evolved. Interesting, there's also if if we're
talking about more modern theories, there's also a study in
the Journal of Obesity that associated bigger butts and thighs
with better health. Now, a lot of people, a lot
of researchers have questioned the validity of this, but these
(08:35):
particular researchers say that lower body fat has a striking
protective role in terms of having fewer heart attacks and
less instances of diabetes. They argue that the fat in
your butt and in your thighs is more stable than
belly fat, uh, therefore causing fewer fatty contents to circulate
(08:56):
throughout the body. So and then that would jive with
the evolutionary psychology thinking that women have bigger butts as
a way to signal our health and fertility and readiness
to make a baby with a with a special someone,
special someone. Indeed, and speaking of special someone's, we've got
(09:18):
to talk about the idea that straight guys when they
look at women, are either a boobman or a buttman.
And there have been studies on this. I was rather
excited to find there's a two thousand study titled perception
of female buttocks in breast size in profile. And this
was an interesting one because it included not only men
(09:39):
but also women and essentially just showed them profiles of
women's bodies and sort of played around with the size
of breasts and buttocks, and they found that the buttocks
size had no effect on attractiveness ratings. It was only
when they manipulated breast size that they saw relationship to
(10:03):
attractiveness ratings. Right. Um, some they did say, like towards
the end of the end of the study that the
fact that these study results were slightly different from other
like silhouettes studies were that apparently some of the silhouettes
they showed people were like so different from the other
silhouettes that they think it is possible that people just
(10:23):
picked the silhouette that they considered to be quote unquote
more normal or you know, like something that's not quite
as exaggerated, not necessarily that people prefer a smaller bus
or a bigger bus, etcetera. Well, and in terms of
real world application of that, it's not like we're walking around,
you know, like men just see the like silhouettes just
(10:44):
walking down the sidewalks. I do wonder it's like when
you see methodologies like that, you wonder how much credence
you can really give to them. Um. So there was
another study in two thousand twelve in the Archives of
Sex Behavior that compared men's reported but or breast preference
(11:06):
with their eye gaze. So this this was a little
bit different methodology, and they found that, guess what, men
tended to be more into butts, not only self reporting,
but also when they did the eye gazing. So they
use eye tracking technology um on the male participants and
then showed them, you know, a lovely a lovely lady,
(11:28):
and tracked where their eyes went either to the butt
or the breasts, and with a guy said he was
a butt guy. He looked at the butt. Interesting, Well
I'm a butt woman. Okay. Yeah, this is something that
is not addressed in research at all. I think just
because we tend to associate the butt obsession more with
(11:48):
straight guys. But I specifically remember, for some reason as
a child, watching say, by the Bell Kelly and Kelly A.
Palaski commenting on the key noess of Zack Morris's but
like and then the audience laugh and I'm like, oh
that's funny. What does that mean? So so you're you're
a butt woman. I am a but woman. And and
(12:10):
and it's I don't just require like a bubbly baseball player,
but to grab onto like I like butts of all
sizes on guys. Oh you're you're kind of a butt anthropologist. Yeah,
I'm going through the forest in my khakis with my
little explorer hat, just like poking poking people's butt these
a little poking stick. Yeah. There's also the fact too
that men's rears are eroticized in gay context obviously, right,
(12:37):
I mean in the same way that people talk about, Oh,
a woman's butt is close to her sexual organs, so
it is taboo. I mean, if you're like Victorian or whatever. Um,
and it's the same. It's the same kind of discussion
that goes on around gayman. But unfortunately, there has not
been research, at least that I found on mail to
mail but attraction. So if there are any researchers listening,
(12:59):
I would like a study on that. So we've covered
now some of the evolution, the science, the psychology of
but attraction. But now we have to get into the
cultural history of our fascination and fetishization of large butts
(13:20):
in particular, and warning it is kind of horrifying, So
brace yourself for that, and we'll get into that when
we come right back from a quick break. So in
our cultural history of the buttocks, we're really going to
(13:42):
focus in on the nineteenth century because that is when
this fetishization of large butts in particular really picks up.
But first we just want to provide a brief timeline
of our collective interest in women's rear ends right, and
(14:03):
women's shape in general. If you're talking about the Venus
of Vinendorf uh from twenty four thousand BC. This is
a figure you've probably seen in textbooks, history, textbooks or whatever.
You know. She's a she's a carved figuring whose features
are incredibly exaggerated, but the focus is her rather large
buttocks and thighs. She symbolizes fertility, all of that good stuff. Yeah,
(14:27):
and she's one of the oldest known pieces of artwork.
So that's why you hear Venus of Villendorff brought up
all the time. So, jumping way way forward in time
into the Victorian era, which is when this kind of
reinfascination really takes a fascinating, splash, horrifying turn, we have
Havelock Ellis who was a physician, sexual psychologist and a
(14:50):
eu genesist who in his series of books The Studies
on the Psychology of Sex, describes the butt, the female
butt as highly fed, wishized, and fetishized. It was indeed
also in the sex lives of Victorian era Britain's that's right.
(15:10):
Spanking was a hugely popular erotic act in Victorian Great
Britain and it was a major feature of pornography around
this time. For instance, there was the erotica of the
era called lady bum Ticklers revels Lady bum Ticklers revels um.
(15:31):
It was described as popularly consumed spanking bass to Victorian erotica, Wow,
talk about spanking bass. So it was just like the
fifty Shades of gray Um. Well, no, of course we
have to get into Freud, because no discussion of history
and sexuality and psychology is completely without bringing up Freud.
(15:55):
He talks about the anal phase that, in his line,
was the root of gay sexual orientation. He said that
successful adults have to pass through three phases oral, anal,
and genital, and he said that if you were anal
retentive and you were stuck in that phase, that you
were not only controlling and uptight, but that you had
(16:16):
a lot of unresolved issues around your butt and hence
he said, oh, and then you would also be gay
because of that. So that's where that comes from. So
of course, also that paints being gay as some kind
of disorder, right, good old Freud, Good old Freud. So
we'll we'll leave him in the anal phase behind and
(16:38):
jump forward to more recent history, because from the nineteen
seventies on this is when we really start to see
the female behind being celebrated so much and obsessed over
so much in pop culture. So in the seventies you
have a guy named Ego Patangi who developed one of
(16:59):
the first widely used but lift procedures. It's worth noting
he was Brazilian, okay, um, yeah, because you know Brazilian
women also known for having larger rear ends, and so
that's when we start going under the knife in order
to get a Brazilian like rear end. It's right, and
people do still use elements of that early butt lift procedure.
(17:23):
So yeah, but let's still happen. I should have pulled
up statistics on how many people get butt lifts each year.
I I read in one of these sources that there
were only only uh six hundred performed in the US
in two thousand five. All Right, I don't know what
that how that compares to any other year or any
other country however, but if we're still in the nineteen seventies,
(17:45):
we can't leave out one of my favorite karaoke songs,
which is Queen's Fat Bottom Girls, which comes out in
nineteen and then leap forward, that's when Sir Mix a
Lot comes out with Baby Got Back. And we could
actually spend an entire podcast digging into the lyrics of
(18:06):
Baby Got Back. Well, yeah, because in the song in
the beginning, it's two white valley girls talking about a
black woman's rear end. Yeah, and and in not so
nice terms, which is going to tie completely into uh,
what we're about to talk about from the Victorian era. So,
but going back to the nineties, in the late nineties,
(18:27):
you see more women seeking but implants and this is
termed the j Low effect. And we'll get back to
Jennifer Lopez later on in the show, because she was
actually very important in terms of sort of bringing our
rear end obsession into mainstream pop culture because she was
(18:48):
this breakout Latina star, which was, as we'll get into,
more significant because she was an African American. She was
not white. She was sort of in middling a Latina. Yeah,
and it's interesting to watch, like as culture shifts and
changes and as body types come in and out of vogue,
which is so ridiculous because it's bodies like whatever. Because
(19:10):
this one source that we were looking at talks about
someone like Janet Jackson who maybe earlier in her career,
you know, she had this rear end. She talked about
how her brother Michael teased her for it, and you
know it was kind of like her butts big and weird.
But as you move forward in time and you have
things like the breakout of Latin pop music in our culture,
(19:34):
people like j Lo who has an unapologetically awesome curvy figure,
then suddenly it's okay for Janet Jackson to sort of
trade on her rear end. And so then in two
thousand one you have Destiny's Child coming out with their
hit Bootylicious, And from there we get back into our
episode long ago on Beyonce because her body has talked
(19:56):
about endlessly. In one feature of her body that is
paid a lot of close attention to is her but right,
And then yeah, that catches us up to people like
Kim Kardashian, who I mean, cud all, that's like that.
You know, I don't not poor Kim because you know,
I'm sure she's doing fine and she's totally happy with
(20:17):
the attention her but gets. But like cheez, you see
tabloid pictures of like, look at what she used to
look like. She had a quote unquote normal butt and
now look at it. Yeah, but if you look at
it's kind of like jen selter the the Instagram but
selfie queen. If you look at Kim Kardashian's Instagram or
her selfies, she I think she's very proud of her.
(20:38):
But she's building a lot of her career I think
from her. But her butt is a lovely foundation. So
now we're going to get into a not so lovely
foundation of our interests or cultural interest and attraction to
large butts in particular. And so we have to talk
(21:00):
out a person who deserves far more attention. In our history,
our name was Sarkee Bartman, but better known as Hot
and taught Venus. So during the age of European exploration,
it's interesting that this episode is coming out so soon
after we did our series on women and Exploration, because
(21:21):
this is sort of the not so pleasant back end
of all of the exploration going on, and exploration particularly
into Africa, and what we're termed excessive buttocks were used
to categorize indigenous people, particularly in Africa, as primitive, which
was then used to justify their enslavement and or forced
(21:44):
subjugation via colonialism. And it was so much this focus
on their behind right, and and judging their bodies as
ugly as other instead of the beautiful, slim, slender europe
And body shape which was considered beautiful and accepted and normal.
Importantly that that did it did justify the other ing
(22:08):
of the peoples of Africa. And why the attention on
the buttocks, Like you mentioned earlier in the podcast Caroline,
during the Victorian era, there was so much obsession with
the butt as taboo because it is so close to
our genitals, and so there was this highly racist idea
(22:29):
that these so called excessive buttocks of indigenous African people
were really signs not only of them being primitive, but
also of having exaggerated sexuality right, and so in England
during this time. Remember this is like we talked about
in our Explore episodes. This is kind of the golden
age of exploration when men and some women are setting
(22:51):
out to learn about the world around them, but they're
not always looking through very clear lenses at the people
who live in the places they're visiting. So England is
in flux during this time between a period of looking
at people different people, different cultures as the noble Savages,
to looking at it through a lens of ethnology, or
(23:13):
more commonly the branch of anthropology that examines differences between
groups of people. And this also ties into the part
in our Explorer series discussing how as exploration is going on,
this is when scientific fields are really starting to be professionalized.
There's a big focus on that, and so within that
you have this focus on ethnology, which really starts to
(23:37):
become a racialized form of science, using what they thought
of as science at the time to prove that people
with different skin colors are inferior in X y Z
kind of ways. And so this brings us to Sarki Bartman,
known as HoTT and taught Venus and hottent taught is
(24:00):
I don't even like saying it on the podcast, because
it's actually a derogatory term. Um. The word HoTT and
tot was derived from the clicking sound of the Coison dialect,
and the Coison are an ethnic group from the Cape
of South Africa, and so when these Dutch men came
in and they heard this dialect, they assumed that they
(24:22):
were just speaking nonsense because again like very limited and
not so clear lens through which they're seeing these people,
and so they refer to them as the HoTT and
tot and one of them captured and enslaved this woman,
Sarky Bartman, and then ended up taking her to London
(24:43):
to put her on display, because this is also the
era of freak shows in London, and so he's like, oh, well,
I've got an idea. We're gonna take this HoTT and
toot venus, which is a derogatory combination of HoTT and
tot and also the venous aspect because her rear was
so large, her butt was so quote unquote excessive, and
(25:07):
thus leading into the idea that that excessive buttocks signaled
her exaggerated sexuality, which is where the venus part comes in, right,
and author Rachel Holmes wrote African Queen The Real Life
of the Hot and Tot Venus and talks about what
happened to Sarky when she was on display in front
of people when they took her to London, and she
(25:32):
was put on display in order to do suggestive quote
unquote native dancing and play African instruments. If that's not
bad enough, she was forced to wear a bedazzled cod
piece that was meant to imply to the audience gaping
at her that she had elongated labia. And this is
what is known as the quote unquote Hot and Tot apron,
(25:54):
which is just mind blowing, yeah, because there was this
idea that, if you know, someone with such a large
butt must also have such a large volva, and people
were oddly obsessed with that image. And so you you
saw her during this time, you saw her a lot
(26:16):
lampooned in cartoons of the day, and she even appeared
on the Five of Clubs on a deck of playing
cards in eighteen eleven. And in Holmes's book, she sort
of tries to paint Sarky as having some shread of
agency and this whole thing, even though it's I think
Holmes is taking a little bit of literary license with that,
(26:38):
because she claims that Holmes was complicit in going on exhibit.
And the one though she read of agency she did
clearly have was that she refused, even though she was
asked many times, she refused to ever reveal her volva right, yes,
(26:58):
and well until after her death. And obviously she did
not consent to that. But she died penniless at twenty
six and Napoleon surgeon general and the famed anatomist George
Cuvier dissected her. He put her body parts on display
at the French Museum of Natural History. This includes her brain,
(27:20):
and this includes her lady a, and this includes her
skeleton and a cast of her rear end. And at
the time this was heralded as you know, a great
scientific undertaking, because oh finally we can you know, under
the guise of ethnology and anatomy, these these emerging fields
at the time, Oh well, we can take this specimen,
(27:42):
as she was considered not a person, just a specimen
and really find out how her brain and body and
labia compared to that of white people, and so we
can then draw racist conclusions from that. And this was
I think Janelle Hobson, who has written extensively on Sarki
(28:03):
Bartman wrote his thesis, which compared Bartman's genitalia to those
of Ringatangs, formed the basis for much of the nineteenth
century scientific racism, which later evolved into eugenics. Right, So
it's it's mind blowing a that this was even happening,
but that this important figure in history has been almost lost. Yeah. Well,
(28:31):
what's even crazier about this scenario is that Nelson Mandela
demanded that her remains be returned to South Africa, and
it was not until two thousand two that France finally agreed, right,
because in the seventies, the French Museum of Natural History
was finally like, okay, we won't put her parts on
(28:53):
display for the general public, but we're going to keep them. Nonetheless,
and when they were going back and forth with the
South African government, France was saying, well, we don't want
to give her back because then if we give that back,
then we're going to have to give so many other things.
But it's a person. She was a person, Yeah, I
(29:16):
mean that. And it apparently took until two thousand two
for Europe to recognize that. And so what scholar Janelle
Hobson has done in studying Sarki Bartman is looking at
how hot and taught Venus sort of set the stage
for the lingering fetishization of particularly African American women's butts,
(29:43):
right because Uh, butts were already fetishized, like we talked
about and uh they were totally taboo, and that was
just among Europeans. And then you add the element of
this woman from Africa that they bring over and literally
put on display, and suddenly there is this fear, this
very like gender based, race based fear of someone else's
(30:05):
sexuality as other and dangerous. Yeah, I mean it ties
into so many different problematic issues because one thing about
this is that her large buttocks sarkeys were pathologized as
something called state apesia. So essentially it was this made
up condition that a lot of European doctors said, oh,
(30:29):
these African women all suffer from state apesia because they
have quote excessive buttocks. And she was exhibited as quote
the most correct and perfect specimen of her race, thus
emphasizing the primitive, grotesque, and hyper sexual nature of the
African people's which leads to so many harmful stereotypes that
(30:54):
still exist today, right, and and the fact that then
that influences how Victorian Europeans saw black men, African men,
as they were just being associated with the wild and
other nous of black women's bodies. Yeah, And so Hobson
talks about how Bartmann being a woman made a huge
(31:15):
difference in the Victorian context because this is also the
time when women, by virtue of being women, were considered
the foundation of a group's morality. This is when you
have the era of you know, the cult of domesticity,
where women are considered, you know, the ones who essentially
(31:35):
reign in men's immorality. And so if you have such
a lascivious woman, as demonstrated by her quote unquote excessive
buttocks and her statopesia, and then you have men who
are attracted to that, well how horrifying, right, Well, yeah, exactly,
(31:56):
And and it was horrifying for them to the point
that white women, if we're looking just at European women,
were considered or associated with prostitution if they themselves had
large fear ends. Yeah, yeah, I mean that that is
how sexualized the butt had become, and there were fears
of white men being attracted to large butts as well.
(32:19):
There was even a French vaudeville play called the Hottentot
Venus or Hatred of French Women, in which an aristocrat
woman must save her cousin from a savage hotton dot.
Oh goodness. Yeah, and so there's all this fear around
large fear ends, and what that means, and how sexual
(32:39):
and and devan it is. And yet in the eighteen
seventies Victorian women start wearing bustles. Yeah, this was something.
And if there are any costume or fashion historians listening,
please right in to let me know if you have
any insight on this, because I wasn't able to. There's
not a lot of focus on the history of the bustle,
(32:59):
as ventially the crinoline style, where you have to think
of like the hoop skirts, the giant hoop skirts fell
out of style, and so they start wearing these posterior,
exaggerating bustles. And while I couldn't find any fashion historian
who put the two together, all almost all of the
(33:20):
historians looking at Sarky Bartman put the two together saying that, huh,
it might not necessarily be because of her. Obviously they
would not be directly emulating her. But clearly there was
some kind of appropriation of that big behind happening within
this more upper class, white, luxurious context. It's funny that
(33:45):
you should say appropriation, Kristen, because that is a word
that comes up a lot when you talk about people
like Jen Selter, the but selfie Queen, the fact that
she has become so famous for essentially explaying for being
a white woman displaying a feature that people associate with
(34:06):
black women. And don't get us wrong, We're not trying
to say that Gen Selter appropriated a butt. You know,
there are plenty of white women and women of all
sorts of ethnicities that naturally have large butts. It's simply
when we look at this fetishization of larger rear ends
in more contemporary context, it is a question of why,
(34:28):
oh why do we all want large butts now that
you know, we see a Gen's shelter or we see
a Kim Kardashian with one. And then you have bloggers
like Kareema Towns at Think Progress and Brittany Daniel at
Clutch who were basically talking about the fact that features
that society associates with black women are not okay until
(34:50):
a white woman. Then introduces them to the culture, and
then it's like, oh, well, this is a trend, now
this is cool. Well, there is a step along the
way to that that Jenelle Hopson talks about, which is
in a big way in the late nineties j Lo.
Because what's fascinating about j Lo's rise is that she
was first kind of brought up in hip hop culture,
(35:14):
but then she becomes more popular in white pop mainstream.
And so Hobson talks about how through her less culturally deviant,
though still sexualized Latina body I'll see also our episode
on Exotic Beauty that it then begins the normalization process.
(35:36):
And so then fast forward to the two thousand fourteen
Vanity Fair spread of jen Selter showing off her butt,
which elicited you know, Karema towns that think progress saying,
whoa what, what's going on here? Yeah? Exactly. And now
that there's anything at all wrong with jen Selter or
j Lo or Kim Kardashian or whoever, like wanting to
(35:59):
take belfies but selfies or showing off their butt or
anything like that, it's just the fact that there's there's
a lot of history behind the behind that is just
ignored Yeah, butts are a loaded topic. And that's not
a pun at all in any way, but it's it's
(36:20):
it's interesting to look at how, you know, you might
pride yourself on your rear end of whatever shape it
is and size, but the fact that there's so much
meaning behind all of that, and and how society has
viewed it over the centuries well, and how it has
tied into how society, white society in particular has portrayed
(36:43):
black women. I mean, really, what it boils down to
is that, you know, if if you want a history
of you know, why white black women have historically been
hyper sexualized, you go back to Sarkey Bartman, and it
all seems to start there because then is linked to,
(37:05):
you know, this idea of African people being primitive and
over sexualized and and essentially inferior. But I do hope that,
via Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, etcetera, etcetera, that hopefully we are
in an era where I mean, we can just maybe
(37:26):
embrace a big butt for what it is, you know,
I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with people
being attracted to butts, or finding big butts delightful or
or dancing with their big butt. I'm basically saying to
working you know what I mean, Like, maybe are we
in a new era of of but pride or are
(37:46):
we simply recycling old fetishizations. Well, maybe we are, maybe
we're not. I think that like a lot of things
we talked about on the podcast, you know, like butts
or don't like butts, small butts, big butts, whatever. But
I think it's important to be aware of the way
you are talking about other women's butts, whether you yourself
(38:06):
or male or female. Yeah, and the assumptions that we
make about someone based on her but because I do
still think that happens a lot. That was one thing
Hobson also talked about was how at the two thousand
two US Open, Serena Williams wore this body suit and
it put her, you know, but was very much on display.
(38:27):
She has a large butt and people would not shut
up about it, right, And when I was reading that,
I was like, God, you know, if this were a um,
very slim figured white woman wearing some type of body
suit like that, would they have freaked out as much
as they did when Serena Williams wore it. Serena Williams,
(38:48):
who was African American. All of the body politics that
goes along with African American women's bodies. I mean, it's
it's layered. Well, speaking of bodies, this reminded me that
a couple of days ago, in fact, the ESPN magazine
Body Issue, their annual Body issue, came out and they
did I think it's like six different covers and the
(39:11):
two featuring a woman on the cover. One is I
don't know her name, oh, a white female athlete, blonde,
and it's the cover shot is very face forward and
she's holding her breasts and it's just waste up. Serena
Williams is on the other one and it's her profile shot.
All of the athletes on all the covers are naked,
by the way, and it's Serena Williams profile shot emphasizing
(39:35):
her butt. And I don't and she's seeming in a
in a pose of pride. I don't think it's anything,
you know. I think she's she's proud of her but
so maybe I don't know. It's just interesting that, like
you see the white woman and it's like holding her
boobs and then Serena showing her butt. So maybe it
maybe it is a bet pride. I don't know. I
(39:56):
need listeners to share what they think is going on. Yeah,
I hope this was enlightening, though I know it was
super enlightening for me. This was a really interesting topic,
if I do say so myself. Yeah, I mean, I
will not look at a but the same way ever again.
I will not grab a butt the same way ever again,
ever again. And once you do, once you make contact,
(40:19):
you have to at least about one fact on this podcast,
just think about the politics of what you're doing, folks.
So with that, we want to hear from folks about
your butt, other people's butts. What are all of your
thoughts on butts? Do you think we are in an
era of but pride or is there still a lot
of fetishization at work? Let us know mom Stuff at
(40:42):
how stuffworks dot Com is our email address, and you
can also message us on Facebook or tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast. And we have a couple of non
but related messages to share with you right now. Okay, Well,
I have a letter here from our social media buddy Sarah,
who was writing us about our women's tennis episode. She says,
(41:07):
as a high school and college tennis player. I thought
I knew all about the history of tennis, but was
excited to learn more. I especially liked you addressing the
obvious sexism in coverage of female tennis players and the
emphasis on their looks. It immediately made me think of
the controversy between Wimbledon Women's singles champion Marian Bartoli and
BBC presenter John Inverdale. Inverdale commented on Bartoli's looks shortly
(41:32):
after she won, saying do you think Bartoli's dad told
her when she was little, You're never going to be
a looker, You'll never be a Sharapova, so you have
to be scrappy and fight. Bar totally commented back that
she wasn't blonde, never dreamed of a modeling contract, but
did dream of winning Wimbledon, and that she was proud
of her accomplishments. Of course, after Inverdale's comments, Twitter erupted
(41:56):
with comments about his looks and the overt sexism, as
Inverdale may no comments about Wimbledon Men's singles champion Andy Murray.
She says love the podcast. I just recently discovered it
and have been listening to old episodes NonStop on my
commute to work. Well, thank you Sarah for listening, and
welcome to the podcast. Well, I've got an email here
(42:16):
from Rachel about our episode on body shaming from a
little while back. She writes, I recently had to revisit
my feelings on the subject when I started dating my
current boyfriend, who is a competitive cyclist. His world is
very centered on fitness, and I've caught hints of body
shaming in his vernacular and in the conversations he has
with other cyclists. Keeping a low body weight is very
(42:39):
important to a cyclist because of power to weight ratio
and for the overall performance of an endurance athlete like
you two. I used to assume that body shaming was
a gendered experience that heavily affects women, but through my boyfriend,
I have a chance to witness men experiencing it. But
under the guise of fitness for cycling. I assume that
men don't want to be seen as insecure here or
(43:00):
even womanly in their weight concerns, so they couch their
weight commentary in cyclist terms like leaning out or peeking
for a race. Instead of saying getting fat, they'll say
losing fitness, and rather than go on the defense, describing
the life circumstances that prevented them from keeping up their
regimen to justify that perceived moral failing of gaining weight.
(43:21):
A hilarious conversation I overheard between my boyfriend and a
cyclist friend went down like this, Hey, do you need
a smaller medium jersey? I'm still small? Oh. I decided
check because I know you haven't ridden for a while.
I thought you might need a medium jersey nowe m
for muff and top. According to my boyfriend, these conversations
are very normal and it's just considered friendly banter between athletes,
(43:43):
meant to keep each other in check and have a
bit of fun. I think body insecurities are universal experience
that manifests itself in so many different ways, but it's
just more heavily veiled for boys. To me, almost feels
as though insecurity is for girls and overblown confidence is
for boys. So thanks for those observations, Rachel, and I'm
(44:03):
going to make myself an Emma's for Muffin Top T
shirt like that. It only comes in medium. That's it. Well,
if you would like an Emmas for a Muffin Top
T shirt or would like to share your thoughts with
us on anything else Mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com is our email address, or if you want
to get in touch with us via social links to
all of that stuff, including this podcast with all of
(44:26):
its source links. If you want to read more about
the history of Sarkympartment, which I highly recommend, there's one
place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never Told You
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com.
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