So…US Vogue, has declared having a butt, a thing. I mean, it MUST be right? Now that the “bible” has declared it. Right?
“The world is thoroughly ready for the jelly” the parting line reads from the article, and much of it suggests that until the moment it was published butts were this foreign phenomenon that no one really cared about. Right?
WRONG.
The article is both stupid funny, and problematic. Stupid funny, because, first of all, I don’t know how this was written with a straight face or was even read and approved, but seriously? The “Big Booty”? what a dumb reference, a reference almost as dumb as the article itself. Who says booty anymore? Patricia Garcia, writer of this ludicrous piece and now, butt expert, goes on to name a few people of reference in popular culture, that she believes have contributed to the rise of da butt. Miley Cyrus, because she twerks her flat ass against other peoples husbands, and has the propensity to go almost naked half the time. So, yeah I guess. Kim Kardashian, with her “singular figure”. My eyes rolled up to the high heavens because anything, ANYTHING at all, that references Kim Kardashian as having any sort of influence, no matter how unimportant and absurd, on popular culture, is immediately nonsensical. Much like GQ naming her woman of the year and Jim Nelson’s even more embarrassing defence and his declaration of love for all the “cool things” Kim and Kanye create, and declaring Kim a stone cold fox in British GQ, where she appears butt naked. But then, he would think that, a magazine notorious for objectifying women, who don’t see women as anything other than to get their clothes of and trade on their sexuality to matter, so he would say that. It about sums up the depth of his thinking; ZERO.
But where was I? Butts, or Booty, or Ass/Arse… etc.
The article is problematic because of its racial overtones. It dismisses the African, Latina, Caribbean etc, women- whose genetic makeup, for the most part, includes a generous gluteus maximus- as being irrelevant and by so doing is dismissive of our culture. No surprises there, to a magazine like Vogue, something is only cool when a caucasian person, its definition of mainstream, does it. Case in point Marie Claire declaring the side cornrows epic because Kendall Jenner was photographed with the hair style. Mmm…K. Vogue is notorious for scheming through culture and cherry picking what it deems acceptable at any one time, but conveniently dismissing the history behind the movement. Its, quite frankly, irritating and insulting, but more than that it further proves the commonly shared notion that Vogue as a magazine has become increasingly redundant. Maybe even irrelevant.
I mean, Beyonce is only the reason why Bootylicious is in the dictionary today, much as I loathe the word.
I’ll excuse the stupidity of this article and grant a small concession on the Beyonce and JLo reference, “the trailblazing butt girl” because they are women who makes no apologies for their bodies in an industry inundated with stick thin types. However, there were butts before and butts after. Traci Ellis Ross, Jil Marie Jones, Serena Williams, Angela Bassett… and on and on.
Let’s talk about acceptability or lack there of; this article is not about accepting our bodies the way they are, or acknowledging that there are different body types out there, neither is it about Vogue’s their acceptance or understanding that the runway does not, in any way, perpetuate real life, we can have that argument till the cows come home. This is about treating the norm like the next big fad, which it isn’t. Real women have hips, butts, stretch marks, breasts- (this may be the next big thing because Kate Upton…who knows?) stop trying to make us feel abnormal because you cannot understand why people should exist outside of your norm and be okay with it, Vogue.
Garcia fell flat on her butt, so to speak, because it shows her abject lack of research into this topic. Get outside your comfort zone, and look into the culture of everyday life, the history of the real world, and come correct. The world has been on the jelly long before Beyonce, Kelly and Michelle got on the scene, and in the history of music, no one, not once ever sang a song about a flat arsed girl. Never.
And to that end, I have nothing to say but- BYE FELICIA.