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