The Booty Movement

So a friend of mine posted the following link on his Facebook page…

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/06/25/_columbusing_college_humor_video_coins_the_perfect_term_for_when_white_people.html

I read the same, and opened almost every single link within the article. And I was left feeling disturbed and confused.

Here’s the thing…

I was very small between the ages of 6-12. In fact, my step mother, and her sister came up with a nickname for me…”mbilikimo”…which is the Swahili word for dwarf. That “nickname” was problematic on so many levels…and I’d like to write about that…but I would be digressing from what brought me here today.

I always tell people that my hips quite literally grew over night. One night I was tiny. Literally a UK size 8 (which was tiny in my opinion and that of my step mother and her sister). And the next morning I was a UK size 14-16. Or at least that’s the way it seemed to me. I was quite literally taken by surprise by the way in which my hips and bum grew within a very short time frame. I was 13 years old when this seemingly “overnight” change happened. And I had just joined an all girls British boarding school.

When I first joined the boarding school, I was the only black girl in a class of about 50. In total I think there were 8-10 black girls in the entire school, which consisted of about 450 girls. Almost everyone in my year was “tiny”…at least in my eyes. All the girls in my class were a UK size 6, 8 or 10. The “big” girls were a UK size “12”. I can safely say this was the case for most of my time in high school. And as a UK size 14-16, I felt huge.

I had a flat-ish stomach. And my waist size was actually a UK size 10-12. But my butt was huge…at least in comparison to the other butts around me. And it made me so self-conscious.  I tried really hard to get rid of it. For 5 years straight I was desperate to get rid of it…or at least make it smaller than it was. I started going to the gym…every single day. I tried to eat less. I even thought I could make myself bulimic. As I stuck a toothbrush down my throat and tried to make myself sick, I finally thought “Wow…maybe you’re taking this a little too far”.

But the thing is, I didn’t think my butt was attractive. In fact I thought it made me unattractive. This was because big butts weren’t “a thing” back then in 2000…or at least they weren’t yet “a thing” in the tiny little middle of nowhere town where my all girls British boarding school was located. I remember hearing the song “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child in 2001. I remember reading somewhere that Beyonce had been inspired to write the song after someone on her team asked her to try and shed a few pounds as she really was getting quite large, and it would show in her music videos.

For the following 12 years any time I felt self-conscious about my weight, and my butt in particular I would think of this song, and feel a little better. Somehow, my big butt was not a problem for me to solve…the words “I don’t think you can handle this”, somehow helped me accept on some level my body as it was, and got me thinking “Some people just can’t handle a big butt”. Which sounds weird. And there are no puns intended. What I mean is I thought “Some people may not like it. They may not find it, or you attractive. But that’s their problem. Not yours”.

Between 2012 and 2014 I lost a lot of weight. Almost 10 kilos. Which for me is a lot. But still my big butt remained. But somehow I had come to feel more comfortable within my own body over the years.

And then I read this article this morning, which claims big butts have become “a thing”. They’re popular these days. Attractive even. Fashionable. J Lo and Iggy Azalea have even written a song about big booty’s.

Have you seen the Vogue article titled “We’re officially in the era of the Big Booty”? If not, check it out here: http://www.vogue.com/1342927/booty-in-pop-culture-jennifer-lopez-iggy-azalea/

According to the Vogue article “it would appear that the big booty has officially become ubiquitous”. Let me be so kind as to share the Encarta Dictionary translation of “ubiquitous”: existing everywhere, present everywhere, or seeming to be. I read this and I was like, “What does that even mean”?

But as you read on you are provided with an explanation: “For years it was exactly the opposite; a large butt was not something one aspired to, rather something one tried to tame in countless exercise classes. Even in fashion, that daring creative space where nothing is ever off limits, the booty has traditionally been shunned.”

The article goes on to ask whether we have J Lo to “thank (or blame) for sparking the booty movement”. J Lo? To thank or blame? Let me just repeat that, to thank or blame? For sparking the booty movement? There’s a booty movement? And J Lo is the one who “sparked” it?

Apparently despite the release of the song “Bootylicious” in 2001, according to Vogue it took “a decade” before “people” were “ready for this jelly” to become the ultimate standard of beauty”. Who are these “people” Vogue is referring to? I suppose I’m one of them…after all it did take me almost a similar amount of time to come to accept my “big booty” as beautiful. Hmmm….

Vogue concludes their, um, well, let’s call it thought provoking article (it has certainly provoked many disturbing thoughts in my mind) by referring to J Lo’s new song “Booty” with this gem: “It’s safe to say that, this time around, the world is thoroughly ready for the jelly.”

Does my acceptance of my body type and shape in 2012, 2013 and 2014, which funnily enough were years when I lost a lot of weight (I now have what some might refer to as an ubiquitous figure- small waist and big butt) have something to do with “big butts” becoming “a thing” in “mainstream media”? The Guardian article asks whether “the attributes that black women have so long been shamed for have finally been given the Anna Wintour seal of approval due to a new Aryan aesthetic?”

I want to agree with the Guardian article when it states that “The era of the big booty has neither started nor ever stopped for black women, and even if it had it wouldn’t be the likes of Iggy Azalea, Miley Cyrus or even J Lo we’d be attributing a rear renaissance to. Despite what the mainstream media told us, black women never stopped aspiring to possess the curves society so hated; we chortled in cinemas at Queen Latifah’s glee from a yes response to the age-old question “Does my butt look big in this?” in the 2005 comedy Beauty Shop. It was an in-joke; funny, because in a world where white is right, that was most definitely the wrong answer.”. I want to relate to this statement. But I don’t. For most of my teenage and early adult life I worked very hard to shed the “curves society so hated”. And I continue to work hard to keep these curves in check…by running 6 km at least twice a week, and skipping lunch almost every day.

I’m not quite sure I “get” the in-joke: if I asked TLML if my bum looks big in an outfit and he replies “yes” I might try to be pleased about that response, but you can count on the fact that I will increase my running distance on my next run, maybe to 7 km. And I’ll try to run a little faster. Burn more calories. And be more diligent about skipping lunch. Consume less calories. Whatever it takes to keep those curves in check.

Am I alone in feeling this way? Ladies can we speak about this? What can we do to change this? I’m trying to do my own little part here:

http://www.amcafe.org/thought-provocations/2014/9/17/women-how-self-image-affects-our-interactions-in-social-and-economic-spaces-part-1

Let’s talk about this…

What if we were all colour blind?

I have just finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book, “Americanah”, a book that I put off reading ever since it was released; I was led to believe the book was about African hair. I sometimes adopt a very “high brow” attitude to music, film and books, and I thought that Adichie’s book about hair was way too low brow, even for me.

However, after struggling through “Dust” by Yvonne Adhiambo, which may have proven to be too high brow for me, I was walking around in my living room looking for something “light” to read, and my eyes fell on “Americanah”. After a moment’s hesitation I picked the book up and read the description on the back: “Ifemelu…suffers defeats and achieves triumphs, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race”. It was this sentence that arrested my attention, and I settled down on a sofa and started reading.

As I have made my slowly through the book (The Love of My Life – TLML – is a fast reader…he literally eats books…he reads books as though he has sat down to eat a delicious meal and is done within a couple of hours…he’s always making fun of the fact that it takes me so long to get through a book) I have found myself relating to many of the experiences that Ifemelu lives through.

It is safe to say that during the first few years of my life I was “colour blind”. I went to kindergarten and primary schools that were full of all colours of children….white, brown, coffee-with-milk, milk chocolate, dark chocolate…but I was never consciously aware of these colour differences. We were all just children.

I was first exposed to a consciousness about skin colour, and more specifically my skin colour, when I went to a British boarding school at the age of 12. Previously I had simply been known by everyone around me as “Maggie, the friend”,  “Maggie, the flute player”, “Maggie, the goal attack on the netball team” etc. However at my new school, I was known as “Maggie, the girl from Africa” or “Maggie, the black girl”.

It’s true… there were very few “black” people in the tiny little middle of nowhere town where my all-girls secondary school was located. And yes, I am black…or rather “kind of milk chocolate coloured”. But the continent where I was born and the colour of my skin had never been an identifying characteristic for me before.

A number of students were fascinated by my “African-ness”…others by my “black-ness”: to them I was foreign, exotic, something to be marveled at. Others were confused by both: “But Maggie, how did you get to the UK? How did you learn to speak English? What does your father do for a living? Is he an African King/chief? Does that make you an African Princess?”

These were all questions that I was bombarded with in the first term of my first year of high school: at first I thought I was being asked funny rhetorical questions, and my response was often laughter or something ridiculous (to me at least) and sarcastic. I would say “I came to the UK on a boat. I was taught English by British missionaries. My father is an African chief, and yes that makes me an African Royal Princess. My father is a very rich cattle herder: he supplies beef and milk to the school and I get to go here for free”.

Others were quietly and politely repulsed: I remember a boy from the neighbouring boys’ school telling me in a very matter of fact way that he would never date a black person. He just wouldn’t. Not because he had anything against black people. Just because he wasn’t attracted to them at all. They weren’t his type. Plus, his family would not approve.

It had never occurred to me that physical, emotional or psychological attraction had anything to do with skin colour. But my teenage mind digested this new information, and I came to accept that for some people at least, attraction had everything to do with the colour of your skin.

After revealing my discomfort with my “new identity” to a trusted adult, she explained to me that the majority of these “children” had never left the tiny little middle of nowhere town where I had recently discovered my “African-ness” and “black-ness”. The knowing adult explained that many of these questions and reactions to my perceived “other”-ness was as a result of lack of exposure to anything and anyone that was “different” to the “children” in any way, shape or form.

As a child myself, I thought, well, maybe you can just about excuse a child who has never left their tiny little middle of nowhere town for not knowing any better…

However, at University, a friend of mine told me that one his friends thought I was “quite well spoken and intelligent…for a black girl from Kenya that is”. The comment was meant as a compliment…but it was inherently offensive. I remember thinking to myself that both my friend, and his friend, should have known better.

One of my exes once noted that he thought I would make the perfect wife due to a combination of my looks, wit and common ethnicity”. I didn’t think much of this statement at first, but it became clear to me that the fact that I was black, Kenyan (or more specifically Kamba) and African had a lot to do with his initial attraction to me…which was unfortunate because everything else about me proved to be quite unattractive…to him at least.

Reading Americanah brought to mind all of the memories I have recounted above…and I realised that the colour of my skin has meant so many different things to so many different people. Unfortunately many people around us are not colour blind…and they use this as the premise from which they interpret your every move, thought, action, decision and choices.

Many different people hold various different stereotypes about what the colour of your skin “means” for you as an individual human being…the colour of your skin is like a voice…one that precedes you, and introduces you to others as a “type” before you’ve even had a chance to open your mouth, speak, and tell a complete stranger something meaningful and true about who you are.

It has got me thinking: what would happen to our world if we lived in a place where our skin colour was not a voice? Where it didn’t mean anything at all? What kind of changes (positive and negative perhaps) would we witness if we could silence this voice? Do away with it all together?

On a personal level my high school experience may not have been dominated by a continuous feeling of being an outsider…of feeling foreign, exotic, sometimes inspiring awe and fascination in some or repulsion in others. I may have bothered to wear something other than jeans, an old t-shirt and trainers to the school disco if I thought I would attract anyone other than the only other black person in my year, a teenage black boy from Nigeria.

At University I may not have spent many hours wondering where on earth the idea that black women were not intelligent had come from…and thinking of ways I could challenge this stereotype as an individual.

And I most certainly would never have dated that ex…Ok, maybe we’d have gone on at least one date…but during that date we both would have realised very quickly that running was the only thing we really had in common (though I think he wished I could have run more often, and faster…this would have helped me shed what he considered excess weight and what I considered “curves”).

But if we could silence the voice of skin colour, what sorts of conversations would we be having about police brutality in different parts of the world? For example in America? What sorts of conversations would we be having about homosexuality in Africa? What sorts of conversations would we be having about gender equality in parts of the world where “tribe” is still a defining characteristic? What sorts of conversations would we be having about feminism and intersectionality?

Marriage will not be my greatest achievement in life as a woman

We’ve been taught to believe as women that “marriage is our greatest achievement”…so we go into relationships, quite literally “hunting” for the ultimate prize…marriage…and in my experience this has been so destructive…I am not defined by my ability to convince a man to “put a ring on it”…My worth and value is not attached to a man wanting to say “I do” or “I don’t” to me in front of my family, friends and a bunch of other randomers who turned up for the food or the drinks or both or just to stare…

I define myself…who I am, what I want, what I do…and I get satisfaction when I live up to my own standards of what it means to be an awesome human being…which necessarily means being kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, loving in way that does not compromise my dignity or the dignity of others, giving, receiving with grace and gratitude, knowing, learning, exploring, understanding, being open to new experiences, and importantly being open to different and diverse ways of being…

So don’t let society dictate what your greatest achievement as a woman ought to be…do that for yourself…and you’ll find that living up to your own expectations of who you think you are, what you deserve, and how you ought to be will come so much more naturally to you…