Intro
In admiring, a person may commit either of these two acts—a sinful act, or a Godly one.
Let’s get this right off the bat, this piece is about the human butt.
Higher Purpose
So it was that God, feeling particularly creative, conceived the idea of mirroring heaven on yet another dimension. And therein came the plan for earth, a land filled with a human race born clueless, born not truly and fully knowing their very origin—their Creator. A human race born with free will—freedom to, in each aspect of their lives, choose. Yet, a human race—a clueless human race, who will grow with a yearning thirst, a God-shape hole. A human race who, in yearning to fulfill this need, will set about on a journey of finding—of finding their Creator. And just like that, God was to, for the very first time in His-cum-Her ethereal existence, have children who will freely, on their very own accord, come in search of Him/Her, in worship of Him/Her.
Yet, in committing this act of fulfilling this higher purpose, God, of course, had to be creative. So sheer diversity, She/He filled these end products of Her/His creativity with. We as God’s people shall hereinafter begin this list of diversity-imbued-creativity. And what better way to begin this demonstration than with the very form of the woman itself?
The Sinful Act: Humans Shocking God
Billions of years ago, after creating the air, water, wind; the skies, trees, and animals—the entire ecosystem actually; when the time came that the earth, being ready, be filled with its ultimate inhabitants, God with Her/His signature swiftness went through this process with such ease and flair that after She/He was done, what the earth had, ready for it, was humans of all shades and colours, as colourful as the world around them—brown people, complementing the brown of the earth; yellow people, complementing the view of the sun from down here on earth; yet another shade (one which we inaccurately describe as white) complementing the…(Forgive me, I’m finding it hard finding a perfect analogy in nature). And then there is black, almighty black, mimicking and outdoing space in all its vastness. Humans were all set to be dispatched to their home—earth. God, exhausted from the exertion of creation, She/He was sure that even more colours would ensue eventually. ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…’ So yes, with humans of all colours coming together in the act of cross-multiplying, even more varieties were to result—humans varied in colours, but same.
But God, He/She suffered yet another round of intense creativity. With the dunes of the deserts in mind, He/She called upon the Black woman, laid her down, and set to committing reductions and additions upon her—took some flesh from her waist, added it to her hips and buttocks. When God was done, the Black woman was too much of a sight to behold—too much of a good sight to behold. So much so that she was sure to elicit deep envy. But God, remembering that She/He had given each of these races—their females and males alike—their individual peculiar, beautiful, enviable traits, thought it okay to do the dispatching anyway. The good Lord was soon to receive one of the greatest shocks yet. Something He/She had spent so much time on, exerted so much creativity on, was for envy’s sake, on earth, being made the subject of senseless ridicule. The perpetrators? A particular race—the White folk. The figure of the Black woman, the zenith of God’s creativity, was being targeted by their White counterparts. The White folk, equally beautiful, equally gifted, equally having their own peculiar traits, she had succumbed to envy. And in so succumbing, they (she and her male counterpart both) had resorted to ostracisation of the very thing of which they admired. What a shame.
Absurdities for Peace
Black folks, since the 15th century happened, have found no peace. In dissecting these plights, we do so, not just for the sake of or love of revisiting past pain. Rather, we do so in order to fish out their inherent absurdities, lay them out one by one, then consequently find in our hearts and minds very apt resolutions to these inherent absurdities. And it is only after so doing that we can reach that ultimate, that true conclusion: that these plights did not happen to us due to our inherent lowliness, but rather due to the momentary stupidity of the committer of those plights. A momentary stupidity—one if not quickly uprooted, like cancer, festers endlessly. Today, the plight of the Black woman, specifically the plight finding form in her very form, her body, is our point of dissection.
We must quickly note that even with the characteristic similarities between members of the same race, God imbued diversity still. That is why the Black women, even in her curves, comes in all shapes and forms—varying bends of curves, and sometimes straightness even. So much so that an image of an overall endowed Black race, is, you are right in thinking, in the end inaccurate. Even within the Black race, there exists differences—different, yet all breathtakingly beautiful.
We sitting here on our giant Ghanaian buttocks have, admittedly, not suffered directly, these things we are about to relate. But we will find today, how indirectly looped we are, in this whole mess of admiration-turned-envy-turned-ridicule. More on that when we come back from history.
The Body of History
It was important that in all aspects, the Black spirit be broken down to feed White insecurities—insecurities arguably born from their very own lowly history. And we will delve into that sometime later. The Black culture, ideology, intellectuality, their very existence as humans, and even their physical forms—their bodies, was made subject to calculated dehumanisation.
By 1810, imperial Britain was in the crossroads of to be or not to be—to free their slaves or to hold on to them still. They, finding their hands tied from having paraded about on the global stage as the very repository of superior morality, slavery looked bad on them. And it was during this period, early 1800s, when Britain was seriously flirting with succumbing to the Abolitionist Movement that a certain Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman (pun not intended), the South African beauty with an amazing set of buttocks and hips, found herself transported into this freak show of a country. Willingly or unwillingly, it is not fully known. But what we know for sure is that Baartman, a full human being, was to feature in exhibitions as a showpiece.
The White folk, their women being endemically straight-figured, with flat behinds, an hour-glass female figure was completely foreign to them. A tiny waist balanced against an enormous posterior, hips so wide that it commanded space, Baartman was a sight to behold—an amazing sight to pay moneys so as to behold. But what was the White folk, if not one to, even in admiration and awe, take to making small the very thing to which they had nothing but sheer admiration for? So Saartjie Baartman, a Black woman, blessed with a naturally occurring biological phenomenon called steatopygia—a phenomenon which results in the accumulation of large amounts of fat in the buttocks, creating a genetic trait common in Khoikhoi women of South Africa, a remarkable hour-glass figure, was taken across country, on exhibitions as a showpiece. Resisting being showcased nude, Baartman was still stripped to her very bare minimum. She was hanged in cages so that the White man and woman may drool on her wonder—19th century’s forceful stripping.
Projected as a figure for the satisfaction of their licentiousness, the White man dissected her. Scientifically, they dissected her too. ‘What could cause such a form so distinct from our flatness?’ They wondered. Artists were her personal paparazzi, producing endless caricatures narrowing down on her figure, exaggerating it every chance they got. Buttocks so big that it could seat a man. At one point she was, when the White man could deign to admit their truth, described as of shoulders and back that were graceful, arms that were slender, hands and feet, charming and pretty to behold. And when they reverted to donning their cloth of pretentious superiority, they called her “the missing link between man and beast.”
Even in her death at a young age of twenty-six, Baartman was still subject and object of intense awe and obsession. Like Jesus, claims were laid to her body. Her genitalia, brains, skeleton, were fought for to be preserved in museums. Immortalised in a cast, her buttocks and hips were skillfully outlined for onlookers to religiously leer at. Very soon South African activists were calling for her remains to be returned home. This was met with strong resistance.
One French museum curator, lending his voice to this resistance, commented, “We never know what science will be able to tell us in the future. If she is buried this chance will be lost… for us she remains a very important treasure.” It’s funny how such sheer stupidity have been allowed (in the past and the present even) to be spewed and be infiltrated without real consequences. Imagine a White man—a man who is in his hometown common, nothing special; yet in another race’s land, distinct, different, ‘strange’… imagine if such a White man is captured, toyed with, and in his death, his remains kept in our museums—his pale skin, a point of wonder (‘How can a skin be so translucent that if one looks closely one traces its interior anatomy? How fascinating!’). Imagine if his tiny genitalia (relatively smaller compared to the Black man’s according to the White man’s own account)… imagine if the severed genitalia of the White man is kept by Ghanaians in our museums, our excuse for denying his homeland his remains being: ‘Who knows what science can tell us in the future from studying the White man’s tiny genitalia?’ Sheer nonsense, is it not? Yet, a plight such as this has been common to the Black narrative.
In 1994, South Africa had its first Black President—Mandela, a man who set to lending his voice to this call for the return of Saartjie. In 2002, the wonder that is Baartman returned home, in what remained of her, to lay peacefully in her own home. But Black women worldwide, left to perform still, the act of living even after Baartman’s death, were to be deprived of peaceful living—just as Baartman had been.
Venus Figurines and White Boards
With the image of Baartman and the lewd interpretation imposed upon her body still in mind, the Caucasian soon extended this image to all Black women—interspersed worldwide. Black women in all shapes, sizes, differing curves, sometimes straightness even, was in the White consciousness, a lewd form; an object of intense scrutiny—an object for the White man’s gaze, their licentious gaze, and the White woman’s envy. Oh! What about the White woman’s body, you say? Well, from all accounts (per the White man’s estimation, that is), there was nothing there to see. Flat buttocks weren’t to them as glaringly desirable as the Black woman’s hourglass. White women had to be offended by this, no? Hence the envy, and then the hate.
When a thing is beautiful it behooves of us, attention. But what fault is it of the Black woman that her very natural state as imbued her by her Creator, draws such awe, admiration, and objectification. Why should she be denied peace for being in possession of such a mundane trait, so much so that they resort to shaming her for it? And ‘shaming,’ the White man and woman shamelessly did to the Black woman.
In so shaming, they did not only attack the Black woman’s body, but her very essence too—her brain; her sense of self, her personhood. The Black woman was said to have developed a big backside from too much sitting, born from too much laziness. Their White counterparts were caged in houses made to play sickly wives, with the Black woman labouring away on plantations—but no, it was the Black woman who was ‘lazy’. And in so lazy-ing away, she had developed a big posterior—so they claimed.
Modern ostracisation have been just as forceful. In the past years (until very recently, and even still, recently) the Black woman has been on the receiving end of ridicule and scrutiny. From the very society around them, in popular culture—in music, on TV, in literature, she has been reminded of the load she carries behind, and has been made to feel small for this Godly trait.
‘She is beautiful; her form is causing me to stare, hence she is a savage woman’—that in essence became the conclusion in many ill-formed White minds then (and even now) on the matter of the Black woman’s behind. The buttocks, whose main purpose is the supporting of human motion, and ultimately, arguably the dispersal of excrement, was all of a sudden, consciously selected by the White folk as object of extreme sexualisation. So much so that the Black woman now, in the Diaspora and Africa, as she commits the act of simply donning clothes, clothes of which her White counterparts, or slim-figured Black counterparts, will get away with; that curvy Black woman committing the very mundane act of walking about in such clothes, is like Baartman, subject to a different perception and reception—she must be showing off! She is too sexy! She must be calling on to male suiters! The White woman, and all women of all races shaped like the White woman is allowed to be comfortable in her skin, in her body, her flat buttocks. The Black woman must move with caution.
Oh! Time, Thou Art God
Yet, for how long can a person pretend? After centuries of pretending to be abhorred by the Black woman’s figure, yet replicating their figures every chance they got, White woman worldwide have, since the late 2000s and early 2010s, succumbed fully to the Black form. The internet is filled with women teaching their fellow women how to get bigger buttocks and hips. And do you know what the funny thing is? These women doing the ‘teaching’ are ironically mostly White women. Very funny.
Many are not sweating it—attempting this natural approach of exercising. Rather, countless White women are suffering themselves the knives of doctors—subjecting themselves to butchering so that they may replicate the Black woman’s figure. Centuries of wanting it, craving it, envying it, now science affords them the chance of getting it. Yet the hatred against the Black woman persists. She, walking around in her natural state, she is seen as a show-off. That which others have to pay and suffer to get, she walks about freely with it—she must be intentionally showing off. A show-off must be taught a lesson, no? So how about she puts it away to spare us all, the White woman especially, the feeling of not being enough!
‘Not enough?’ Please stop whatever it is you’re doing now, go find a White lady and tell her that this is not true. Her form, though admittedly comparatively flat, is also beautiful. God makes no mistakes. Tell them now, because if this fact had been truly known by the White person centuries ago, this whole history, this demonic, abhorrent history of calculated demeaning of the Black person would not have happened. Tell the White woman not to mind anyone who tells them that the reason for their flat backsides is that God, in sending them off to earth after moulding them, patted their bottoms a little too vigorously in enthusiastic deployment, saying, ‘Go, go, go my dear children upon the earth!’ Tell them that the flatness does not result from the fact that Lucifer, on the day that he/she was being dismissed from heaven, took to jumping up and down petulantly and haphazardly saying, ‘No, no, no! I won’t go!’ And in so jumping, did so upon the carefully crafted clay of the White woman’s buttocks.
The Godly Act
Someone please tell the White woman in search of big buttocks today, not to waste their time on exercising, nor their moneys on surgery, but instead, take to just sitting down. Because apparently (according to their own accounts some few years ago) it is the sitting that caused the Black woman her big buttocks and wide hips. No? So let them sit till the world’s end, and let’s all upon the earth be a witness to an enhancement. Till eternity, I tell you. Sheer stupidity.
Tell the White man and woman that there is nothing wrong with showing admiration to that which we admire. Tell them that they can do as I do every time I see beautiful Black women interspersed worldwide in the varied curvy forms, whisper to themself, ‘God is good.’ That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Godly act.
Personhood
Years later, and yet another twisted turn of events has ensued—a very unfortunate one. The Black woman, suffering this expectation of curviness, with this article perhaps lending even more voice to it, is joining her White counterparts in the gym, and worse—under the knife, all in pursuit of the Black body. Twisted, twisted turn of events! There are more curves on this sociological charade of twists-and-turns than there are on the hourglass figure of the Black woman herself, I tell you.
In ‘Backwards Ever, Forward Ever’ we promised ourselves a journey through nationhood. We noted that before optimum nationhood could be attained, optimal personhood had to be, first. And what is personhood if the very skin, body one walks around in is called to question, mocked, downgraded? So yes, this article is about buttocks. I’m sorry.
And no, this article is not about football. I thought I’d make this clear from the get-go. So, to the woman who may have not chanced upon this piece yet, please give your husband a chance. This article he is showing you is not about football…He just wants to show you the last sentence of the paragraph titled ‘The Godly Act’ as proof and reassurance that whenever he is caught staring at another woman’s behind, he is only doing so in praise of God. Hallelujah.
