It all started in 1992, when Sir Mix A Lot announced that he liked big butts, and about that, he couldn’t lie. Since then, we have been consumed by the big booty hysteria.
The big butt pandemic appears to have taken this country and its inhabitants by storm. Perhaps never before has a single body part been so overly glorified. The butt has become a pop culture obsession that is taking over our air waves, TV screens, minds and bodies. No longer is the big butt a largely unrecognized feature attributed solely to the African-American woman. Sometime after the era of skinny-obsession in the early 90s, it became cool to have a larger derriere. Somewhere between that point and now, it became necessary to have a big butt. There is scarcely a rap song out there that is free of lyrics proclaiming blatant adoration of, not just the butt, but the huge “bootylicious,” “badonka-donk,” “fatty.” There is scarcely a red carpet lacking beautiful women turning away from the cameras in order to enable the perfect booty photo op. There is scarcely a time when a well endowed woman walks down the street without droves of men breaking their necks to check out her back. What’s with the big booty obsession? When did it become cool to have a “fat” a*s? And why?
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Its a beautiful thing to see a woman with a nice shape, but to demand an outrageous hip-to-waist ratio from every woman seems unfair. There is now so much pressure to have a “donk” that women are seeking surgical procedures to enhance their natural assets. The ‘booty obsession’ is becoming a ‘booty complex’ that might have a negative effect on some women and their body image perceptions. While the ‘donk’ movement has embraced a slew of women (namely ethnic women) who were once excluded from mainstream concepts of beauty (which equated beauty with slimness), it has excluded those fondly referred to as the “little booty cuties.” While the big booty obsession seems like a passing trend, its current reign over black womens’ self image is quite powerful, and even more alarming.
What are your thoughts? What’s with the booty obsession?
By Jeanene James
