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I don’t know how I feel about Buffie the Body…on the one hand I feel she is a modern-day * Sarah Baartman, but on the other hand I feel she should go for it, make as much money off it as she can. My rear is not as big as hers but the attention I have received, and I’m sure many similarly shaped black women have received, due to it has been a bane to my existence most of my life. You have no idea. I have been groped, followed, hooted at, derided, to the point where at one point in my life I wore nothing but tent-like dresses. I still watch how I dress and still prefer skirts and other clothes that disguise my behind. It’s just ridiculous how men of every color act toward women shaped like this. I’m saying if I had a dollar, just a dollar!!! for every time I’ve been harrassed for the past 20 years (ages 14-34) specifically about my rear end, I would have thousands of dollars. a low estimate would be $30, 40K. I am so serious. So I feel like at least this sister is getting paid for the unwanted attention and harrassment she would have gotten anyway for free.

“On that same [video] set, I had to wear a short, tight dress. I had some downtime, so I sat in one of the rooms where the food was set up. Soon one guy came in and then another. Within a few minutes, fifteen guys were surrounding me, and I was trapped. I felt like a specimen in a museum. I didn’t want to get up because I knew if I did, they would start making a fuss over my ass. I kept thinking, ‘I’m sitting here with these guys ogling, trying to touch my leg and arm, trying to see what kind of girl I am, see if they can run a train on me.’ I was so terrified of getting up. The dress was so short and my shoes were so high, I was afraid to even uncross my legs. Eventually a crewmember came in and regulated the situation; he could see how terrified I was about even moving an inch. It all lasted about ten minutes.”
— Melyssa Ford, “Calendar Girl” (fromNaked)

“. . . Master Hendrick would invite the spectators to examine me to assure themselves nothing was fake. Some of them accepted the invitation by touching my backside or searching for evidence of padding. One pinched me, another walked around me, a gentleman poked me with his cane, a lady used her parasol to ascertain that all was ‘natural.’ Master Hendrick sometimes used a long piece of bamboo to prod me around or move me forward or backwards. But worst of all, the laughter — raucous, lewd, predatory, and hate-filled — never stopped. It erupted at the slightest excuse, a stumbling foot, a tear, an epithet from a spectator, the shrill whistles and catcalls of the gallery.”
— Barbara Chase-Riboud, Hottentot Venus
http://www.popmatters.com/columns/reynolds/060310.shtml

*Sarah Baartman’s genitals were cut out, pickled, and put on display in France until 1974. I was born in 1972. That means in my lifetime a black woman’s personals were displayed like an animals’. and nothing really has changed, I feel this is what the world thinks of black women to this day. Some 160 years after her death! her genitals were still on display, but were finally removed from public view in 1974. In 1994, president Nelson Mandela suggested that her remains be brought home.

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