In the introduction to her book "Butts: A Backstory,"
journalist Heather Radke recalls a moment when, at 10 years old, she
and a friend were cat-called by two teenage boys while out riding their
bikes.
"'Nice
butts!' we heard them say," Radke writes. "The fact that they said
something unprompted about our butts felt uncomfortable and bizarre... I
was aware that there were body parts that were considered beautiful and
sexy and were coveted by others, but it had not occurred to me that the
butt was one of them."
That episode was just one a series that led Radke to realize how big of a role backsides play not just in our relationships with our bodies, but in the cultural, social and gender-specific experiences that define womanhood.
"Butts,
silly as they may often seem, are tremendously complex symbols, fraught
with significance and nuance, laden with humor and sex, shame and
history," she writes. "The shape and size of a woman's butt has long been a perceived indicator of her very nature — her morality, her femininity and even her humanity."
It's from these observations that "Butts" — a thoroughly researched cultural history of the female butt — stems.
From supersized to a more natural look: The evolution of breast implants
Weaving
together memoir, science, history and cultural criticism, the book
addresses the physiological origins of our behinds and takes readers
from the cinched waists of the Victorian era all the way to Kim Kardashian's Internet-breaking backside
and the popularization of the Brazilian butt lift. In between, Radke
examines the role of eugenics, fashion, fitness fads and pop culture in
defining the racial and misogynistic standards surrounding the butt.
"I
only know what it's like to be a White woman with a big butt, which
obviously has its limitations," Radke said in a phone interview. "It was
important to me to challenge our ideas about where bodies come from by
listening to different voices."
"Since the rise of the transatlantic slave trade,
there's always been a kind of racial undermeaning in any conversation
around the butt, as well as gendered approaches to questions like 'What
is a feminine body? What is a beautiful body? And how feminine can a
beautiful body be?'" she continued. "The answers to those questions have
oscillated through time, but our deep preoccupation with this specific
body part reveals how the butt has long been used as a means to impart
control, prescribe desire, and install racial hierarchies."
Butt-based prejudice and appropriation
A
recurring figure in "Butts" is Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman — the
so-called Hottentot Venus (the term Hottentot, now widely regarded as
offensive, was historically used to refer to the Khoekhoe, an indigenous
tribe of South Africa). Baartman was an Indigenous Khoe woman forced to
exhibit her "large butt" for White audiences in Cape Town, London and
Paris in the 19th century.
Radke's
account of Baartman's life, and of how her body became "a fantasy of
African hypersexuality," underlies much of the book's narrative, as she
traces the stereotypes created by European "racial scientists"
of that era and, later, the skewed and prejudiced legacy of big-butted
women as more highly sexual -- especially Black women -- directly back
to the exploited Baartman.
Radke highlights the bustle garment popular in the 19th century. Credit: De Agostini Editorial/Getty Images
Radke spoke with Janell Hobson, a professor of women's, gender, and
sexuality studies at the State University of New York at Albany who has
written extensively on Baartman. Hobson links the fetishization of
Baartman's figure to the seeding of colonialism and the continuation of
slavery into White society.
"(Baartman's) show perpetuated ideas around African savagery and
primitive Black womanhood, " Hobson explains in in the book. "So when
white people were looking at Sarah Baartman, they were projecting all of
this stuff they'd already inculcated in the culture."
"Baartman's
story is still with us in a lot of ways," Radke said. Although she died
in 1815, "her body was on display in Paris up until the 1980s, then
again in the '90s. That really isn't that long ago, and tells you just
how much we've turned her into something grotesque to gawk at — a
stereotype and symbol of exploitation."
Radke
later points to the bustle — an undergarment popularized in the late
19th century designed to make a woman's backside look enormous — as a
glaring example of White appropriation of Baartman's figure. "It was a
way for Victorian women to look like Sarah Baartman, while at the same
time asserting their own whiteness and privilege, as it could simply be
taken off," Radke said. "That behavior would be repeated again and again
through history."
Miley Cyrus performs during her Bangerz tour at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on March 1, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Credit: David Becker/Getty Images
Shee explores that same butt-based cultural appropriation — and
monetization — as exercised by celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Miley
Cyrus, whose famous twerking routine at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards
and during concerts on her "Bangerz Tour" that same year (where she
used a large prosthetic butt as part of her choreography) was, Radke
writes, a prop to "'play' in Blackness."
Alongside
addressing the visual culture of Black music videos, plastic surgery
and the recent belfie (a portmanteau of butt and selfie) craze in the
same vein, Radke also highlights periods in contemporary history where
trends skewed in different, oppositional directions. She highlights the
rise of "buttless women" in the 1910s — a look best represented by the
sleek look of the flapper — through the invention of sizing and the 90s
brand of "heroin chic" captured by the supermodel Kate Moss. Such an aesthetic is "something that's never really gone away," Radke noted.
"I
didn't aspire to write an encyclopedia of the butt, but rather give a
historical context to the way it has been perceived and portrayed, and
how women's feelings around it have shifted alongside it," Radke
explained. "Whether consciously or not, we, and society at large, have
always been paying attention to our butts — hiding them, accentuating
them, fetishizing them. Which is kind of funny, when you think it's
actually a body part we cannot see ourselves unless we're in front of a
mirror." As she writes in her book, "the butt belongs to the viewer more
than the viewed."
Reclaiming the butt
While
many of the stories exposed in "Butts" are steeped in physical
suffering — diets, restricting shapewear, surgical scalpels — there's
also joy to be found.
To counter the extreme workout regimes of the 80s, like the "Buns of Steel"
fitness craze that equated a sculpted butt to self-control and
self-respect, Radke profiled the fat fitness movement that emerged
during the same decade, which reimagined "what was possible for people
who often felt excluded from mainstream fitness culture" to offer a form
of resistance.
Drag queens dress using padding and stockings prior to the NEPA
PrideFest Royale drag pageant at the Hilton Conference Center in
Scranton, Pennsylvania on June 25, 2022. Credit: Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
In
Astoria, Queens, she spent time with a group of drag queens who sculpt
foam butt pads to embellish their backsides, turning the butt into
something joyous and judgment-free.
"A
history of bodies — especially female bodies — is always going to be a
history of control and oppression, but I felt it was important to also
show the other possibility: liberation," Radke said. "Those stories were
some of the most fun research I did, and some of the most surprising,
too, as they allowed me to meet people who have overcome societal
prescriptions, and embraced a different way to think about bigness,
which helped me reframe it, too."
Ultimately, Radke said, what's perhaps most compelling about the butt is that it doesn't have to mean anything.
"Butts
have the power to make us feel so miserable or angry, especially when
we're in a dressing room trying on a pair of jeans that just won't fit,"
she noted. "But that angst is the result of centuries of history,
culture and politics. It doesn't come from our bodies, it has been
placed on them. If we take a step back, we'll see that butts are just a
body part. They could mean nothing at all."
Categories 
