The modern world is overwhelmed with various social issues. One of such issues is stereotyping. Gender and racial stereotypes within the media are appearing with stronger and stronger amount every time. This paper will focus on the racially marked female bodies, where the media shows racial constructs of the females.
This year fashion magazine "Vogue" announced, by showing a few examples that mass culture started the era of big booty. By naming some examples, there were discussed the pictures of a celebrity Kim Kardashian in a loud photo session for "Paper" magazine, styled by a controversial photographer Jean-Paul Goude'a. Kim did not take a dime for the photoshoot for the magazine "Paper" dime. Why? Apparently, her dream was to be photographed by the famous Jean-Paul Goude. This artist, who discovered Grace Jones, is responsible for some of her best photoshoot, for example the photos where she was locked and roared like wild animal in a cage, released in 1976 album "Jungle Fever". The publishing house however did not present the images of flora and fauna of Africa, but naked black women, presented as wild, sexual objects. Doesn’t that sound racist?
What’s interesting, one of the photos, where Kim is holding a glass of champagne on her famous booty, is a reinterpretation of photograph from the earlier mentioned album. Posed by completely naked model Carolina Beaumont, the work was entitled "Champagne Incident". This pose is another clue about the racism to which journalists have already managed to relate to. It's about Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman, the so-called Black Venus.
Saaratjie was the star of the nineteenth-century panoptic of so called collections of curiosities. These itinerant circuses and their attractions were people and animals with unusual features - the man-elephant, a dog with two tails or just black woman with distinctive shapes. Saaratjie was kidnapped from Africa and presented in museums of curiosities, as the embodiment of the wild, untamed sexual power. Her most prominent feature was a very protruding butt, to which Goude evidently appealed in his photography. Viewers can not only look at her, but also see how untamed is the savage in practice. Therefore Saaratjie died very young as a result of venereal diseases. However, her death did not mean the end of her career. Baartman’s body was mummified and rode away with the exhibition. Saaratjie was buried 187 years after her death.
Just a few days after breaking the internet with scandalous photo shoot, had fueled an unexpected debate, the subject of which is not only the ideal of women's beauty, but racial stereotypes dating back to Christopher Columbus. Even 100 years ago these pictures could be considered as the vulgar caricature of ailments affecting African women.
It is essential to take a look on one star curvy lady, called Nicki Minaj, who’s booty, as some say, is attributed in Minaj’s art as a more important thing than her voice. If one compares Nicki Minaj (specifically the incorporation of new single Anaconda), and earlier mentioned Saartje Bartmann, one could have an overview of the various documents which are examples of the objectification of the female body image and black peoples images. Rhetorical question arises: How close is she to this look? With which essentially the Paris audience looked at Saartje Bartmaan and later at Josephine Baker - a black dancers from St. Louis, star of stage of Paris' stages in the twentieth century. According to ”End violence against women.org”. “Black women are commonly portrayed as hypersexual and with a focus and fascinated gaze on their bottoms, invoking ideas of black women as wild and animalistic” (Endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk, 2016) Anaconda turns out to be only a repetition of the cruel image of the black female body with its stereotypical magical vitalism and rhythmic eroticism. Nicki Minaj is therefore just another figure of endless spectacle, an artist forced to sell her “fantastic” buttocks in the capitalist machine of the images created by the white man about a hundred years ago. However , considering the game that singer leads with her own image one can look at Anaconda music video with vision, that on one hand the viewer sees history in circles, but on the other hand one sees the manifestation of Minaj’s sexual subjectivity, where she tries to overwork her own identity, to free from Hottentot Venuse’s image and change the preset stereotypical look on black female’s bod . Nicki wants to twerk in the jungle despite her black skin, so she just does this, but when Drake tries to touch her, she steps out of the frame.
References
Garcia, P. (2014). We’re Officially in the Era of the Big Booty. [online] Vogue. Available at:
http://www.vogue.com/1342927/booty-in-pop-culture-jennifer-lopez-iggy-azalea/ [Accessed 3 Mar. 2016].
Endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk, (2016). News · End Violence Against Women. [online]
Available at: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/news/162/sexism-racism-
endemic-in-music-videos-new-briefing [Accessed 3 Mar. 2016].
