First, the love. Booties are just great! The right butt on a man or a woman can make your heart speed up. Add the right pair of jeans, the denim hugging those cheeks just so, and lawd have mercy, it's a sight to behold.
As men's pants get baggier and baggier (especially in the Bay Area, where I live—thanks, hyphy movement), it's much harder to spot a hot masculine booty unless you like strippers (hmm), pro football players (mmmmm), metrosexuals (not for me, thanks) or the WWE (yes and no—but that's a blog for another day). But, ahhh, when it comes to fine women's booties, this is your time. From the rise of J.Lo a few years ago to the debut of Apple Bottoms jeans, big booty is on display more than ever before.
This is not to say that there was never ass-love afoot in American society before the 2000's. The ripe, full curve of juicy hindquarters has always had its connoisseurs. But remember when "Baby Got Back" was either a controversy or a revolution, depending on your point of view? I was in high school in a conservative smallish-town in Arizona when Sir Mix-a-Lot's booty call hit the charts. I remember sitting outside of a restaurant with two friends and having a carload of boys shout "baby got back" out the window at us as they drove by. My friend and I started to argue about who it has been directed at. "Hey," she said. "If you wanna claim that, you go right ahead." Now, I thought we were arguing for the comment, not against it. Hell, yeah, I wanted to claim it! I'm Black. Big booty is a compliment to me. I once heard a comedian say if you want to flatter a White woman you tell her she's got the smallest butt in the world and if you want to flatter a Black woman, you tell her she's got a big ol' butt. Made sense to me based on what I'd seen growing up in a Black neighborhood while being educated in a predominantly white school. That voiceover at the beginning of "Baby Got Back" ("Oh.My.God. Becky, look at her butt…she's just so, sooo BLACK!") sounded like something one of my classmates might say.
On a good day I can say I have a kinda cute ass. The right cute panties, the right photo angle, and I can pass it off as more juicy than it actually is. My roommate sometimes says, "Those pants make you look like you got a lil bit of booty!" Once he even went so far as to say that my booty was bangin' in my new jeans. He asked me later if men at the club I went to thought the booty was poppin'. They didn't. They rarely do. I don't have a pancake-flat ass. But compared to what a lot of sistas are packing, I have always come up short and I always will. My assets are all up front. Ask me to show you what I'm working with and I'm gonna have to show you cleavage.
And so, the hate. Or rather, the hateration, as the kids say. It's not true hate in the old-fashioned sense of the word where I actually despise anyone. It's hate in the modern connotation, i.e. envy. I do not hate my big-bootied sisters of any size or color. I like watching y'all make your tootsies roll. I just wish I had one to roll out myself! I am so incredibly jealous of women with amazing asses. I'm obsessed with it. Part of me seriously believes my life would magically be better if I had a juicy behind. A big butt is a kind of currency, especially in Oakland. I want to be able to cash in, too!
My friend N. says it's all in the engineering. She reminds me if I wear the right pants and the right heels, my butt will look great. She's right to some extent. But she's built like she was meant to model thong underwear. If I had an ass like hers, I'd burn most of my calories per day rubbing my own buns. For real. She's naturally blessed with what I am supposed to be aiming to construct through exercise and the right panties and $80 from Macy's instead of the $13 paid I'd like to get at Ross. She does not have to create the façade. So I have to take her good-booty advice with a grain of salt.
My friend H. reminded me, "You don't have to have a big booty to have a good booty." Ok. I suppose. But I want a big booty anyway! Big booties are in demand these days, and as with so may other things, I want what I do not have. There are two female body areas in American culture that are allowed to be huge. One is breasts, the other is butt. One I've got, the other I don't. I've got a big belly but that counts for nothing unless you're with child or you're Buddha. Someone once told me if I could move what I have in front around to the back, I'd be perfect. Since I've never heard of a belly-to-butt transplant, I guess that type of perfection is out of my grasp.
As a big girl, it's even worse in some ways. Thin girls with flat butts get to claim "skinny" and meet the beauty standard that way. In the big girl world, there are a lot of people who say they love curves, but they only love certain curvy parts. Again, boobs and booty count for a lot. Dangerous curves are supposed to include a drool-inducing derrière. I ain't got it. My friend once asked me if I thought that flat-chested women felt the same way about me as I feel about cuties with the booties. Maybe they do. DDD inspires awe in a lot of folks. "You can't have everything," R. tells me. "You've got a cute face, you've got the boobs, you've got the brains, you're funny. What more do you want?" I want a big booty! I'm reminded of it every time some catchy new butt song gets stuck in my head. The music industry is in love with ass right now. And the music industry is killing me.
At the moment, an ass song is like a good love song—every man in R&B or hip-hop has got to have one in his repertoire. In the 90's, Hammer (yes, even M.C. Hammer!) wanted pumps and a bump. Now, T-Payne is shaking and sticking and moving trying to get to you and that booty. The more things change the more they stay the same. There are 400 ass anthems on the radio, including one urging a girl not to turn around yet because her pretty round thing in the back is such an inspiration that the singer is not ready to see the beauty of her face yet. Really. Good thing I like rock, too, cuz I need a booty break sometimes and I can't get it any genre dominated by Black (or wannabe "black-like") male musicians. I know Queen honored fat bottom girls, but they're not playing that on my local rock station so I don't have to be reminded about booty if I slide on down to that part of the dial.
Still, you really can't get away from booty. Even the country boys have a booty anthem now. When I first heard "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" I just laughed. I won't elaborate on what was so funny because it seems fairly self-explanatory to me. Honky tonk badonkadonk. Do I really need to say more? But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought DAMN! Is there anywhere left where I can avoid being reminded that no one is singing a song to my ass? Do I have to start listening to opera now or what?
So, I'm totally jealous of every woman whose bum can be compared to some super-round fruit (first it was the apple bottoms, now there are a lot of guavas and mangoes popping up). Hey, I've got fruit, too! Check out these grapefruits! But, nooooooo. Booty is the body part of the hour. Where have all the breast men gone? Where are all the people who like a great rack as much as lots of back? Well, Bubba Sparks went looking for Miss New Booty because he "once was a breast man but now it seems…your chest is just whatever" in comparison to a glorious caboose. Maybe the rest of the chest-lovers went with him. Booby anthems are not the songs de re jour. There hasn't been a good breast song since Zapp's "More Bounce to the Ounce," has there? (Please don't message me and say anything about Mix-a-Lot's "Put 'em on the Glass" because we all know it sucked and it pales in comparison to "Back". So I don't even want to hear that s*@t!). Hey, I've got great legs, too. But unless ZZ Top makes a comeback, no one will be singing about those, either.
So in the absence of a true ode to chi-chis or a chorus about curvy calves, I am forced to endure the constant reminder that what I lack inspires song and what I have is not worth singing about these days. I torture myself with this knowledge daily. Which, frankly, is absolutely ridiculous.
Booty obsession (the singers' and rappers' and mine) is a delicate balance between appreciation and objectification. If I'm truly appreciative of booty, I can admire it without having it for myself, the same way I admire the Alvin Ailey Dance Company even though I can't dance. If I'm just objectifying butt-heavy girls (or even more frighteningly ridiculous, if I'm mad because I'm not being objectified in that same way), I really need to find something better to do with my time and energy. If someone else is backing hers up, I'm gonna watch her put it in reverse and be happy for what she's got instead of being mad at what I don't. Admiration without hateration is my new motto.
There is so much more to me than my ass (or lack thereof). I don't have to reduce my worth to the shape or size of one body part. I'm declaring as of now that my butt is just fine the way it is. If it gets fatter or flatter through eating and exercise, I'm gonna let it do what it does and fight like hell to be happy with it the way it is.
And anybody who doesn't think I'm bootylicious enough can kiss my flat ass.
