Sarah Baartman’s Hips From Exploitation to Empowerment
How one lady’s buttock was made a mockery and today glorified.
Sarah Baartman was born to a Khoekhoe family near Camdeboo, modern-day Eastern Cape of South Africa. Camdeboo was a Dutch Cape Colony and became a British Colony by the time Sarah was an adult. Her birth name is unknown and her surname has two spellings, Bartman and Bartmann. When she was an infant, her mother died and her father was later killed by Bushmen (San people) while driving cattle.
Thereafter, Sarah’s childhood and teenage years were spent on Dutch European farms. Peter Cesars, a free Black trader encouraged her to move to Cape Town in the 1790s. She remained in Cape Town for two years and earned a living as a washerwoman, nursemaid, and wet nurse. She was briefly married to a Dutch soldier and had two children who died as babies.
Hendrik Cesars began to exploit her in exchange for cash and she was encouraged or forced to travel to Britain to make money by exhibiting herself on stage in 1810. History does not indicate if she was forced or voluntarily migrated to Britain. She became an international sensation of objectification. Thereafter was paraded around Europe as spectators jeered at her large buttocks. She was made into an embarrassing and dehumanizing spectacle who was forced to sing and dance for white onlookers.
During these exhibitions, she was often nude and sometimes suspended in a cage on stage, poked, prodded, and groped. While being made a spectacle, her body was characterized as grotesque, lascivious, and obscene because of her protruding buttocks from a condition called steatopygia, common in regions of southern Africa. She also had elongated labia, a physical feature derogatorily referred to as a “Hottentot apron.”
Sarah Baartman being paraded around Europe and a money maker for Whites began trafficking other women from the same part of Africa to Europe for white entertainment. Whites’ bodies being vastly different, Baartman’s features were exoticized due to her voluptuousness and curvaceous body.
Baartman was an exhibition for wealthy people’s parties and private salons. Being treated much like an animal, by the time she got to Paris, her existence was really quite miserable and extraordinarily poor. It was suggested that on occasions she wore a collar around her neck when being paraded before White audiences.
By the time she died, in December 1815 around the age of 26, she was a prostitute, and penniless. Her death may have been due to an undetermined inflammatory ailment, possibly smallpox, syphilis, or pneumonia.
Fast forward to the 21 Century, while Black women have accepted their bodies as being a part of the African heritage even in the face of being ridiculed on occasion within the race and other races, predominantly the white race, have changed this narrative to one of pride and confidence. Just like full lips were a trademark of the African heritage and often were made fun of. Today, both protruding buttocks and full lips are a big business in the cosmetics and plastic surgery industry.
Social media has given rise to many Black full-body women making much money from their anatomy. On Tiktok, Instagram, and other social media sites, women are parading big butts and making tons of money exhibiting their anatomy, inclusive of the lips. Advertisers seeing their huge following are now paying them to advertise on their platforms. They are showered with gifts, services, and merchandise from beauty and apparel companies.
These ladies are modern-day Baartman. Their only difference is they are monetizing their bodies and making money versus being exploited. The good part is these ladies are celebrating their being and physicalities with pride and empowerment on social media. Twerking has become popular with large butts and viewers and followers are in the millions while others have gone viral. Advertisers are making lots of money and the ladies are empowered and profiting.
Lastly, Baartman’s image was engulfed by slavery, unwillfull submission, and colonialism even labeled as exotic and overtly sexual. Hence thereafter, Black women were labeled as sexually promiscuous, lascivious, and hypersexual.
In conclusion, what would Baartman think of the ladies of today parading their large butts with pride and confidence while gaining notoriety and financial gain for themselves? Her legacy gave way to a new day, therefore what she endured paid off for future generations. May she finally rest in power for her life mattered more than being a spectacle.
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