The journey to body positivity is complex, especially for Black women navigating a world with often-narrow beauty standards. This article delves into the unique challenges faced by big African women in America, exploring how historical objectification, cultural expectations, and the rise of social media intersect to shape their body image.
Hips and History: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman
Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, a Khoisan woman from South Africa, became an international sensation of objectification in the early 1800s. It’s unclear whether she went willingly or was forced to do so when she left her native land for Europe. Showmen exhibited her throughout Europe, where, in an embarrassing and dehumanizing spectacle, she was forced to sing and dance before crowds of white onlookers.
Often naked in these exhibitions, Baartman was sometimes suspended in a cage on stage while being poked, prodded and groped. Her body was characterized as grotesque, lascivious and obscene because of her protruding buttocks, which was due to a condition called steatopygia that occurs naturally among people in arid parts of southern Africa. She also had elongated labia, a physical feature derogatorily referred to as a “Hottentot apron.”
Because they diverged so drastically from dominant ideas of white feminine beauty, Baartman’s features were exoticized. Her voluptuous and curvaceous body - mocked and shamed in the West - was also described in advertisements as the “most correct and perfect specimen of her race.”
Baartman had a naturally occurring condition called ‘steatopygia.’ Both became symbolic markers of racial difference, and many other women from this part of Africa were trafficked to Europe for white entertainment.
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The celebration of Sarah Baartman’s features marks a departure from her historical image.
The Tragic Life of "Hottentot Venus"| Sara Baartman
The Baartman Ideal: A Blessing or a Curse?
While Baartman may not have been able to keep the cash people paid to ogle at her, Black women today can strive for her body type and make money off it. Once subjected to the mockery of an insidious white gaze, Baartman’s physique is now profitable - as long as these women are comfortable with being objectified.
Today, the Baartman body can be advantageous, especially on social media, where Black women have the opportunity to produce content that’s socially and culturally relevant to them and their audiences - and where users can make money off their posts. On various platforms, women leverage their looks to obtain paid advertisements or receive free gifts, services or merchandise from various beauty and apparel companies. They’re also more likely to gain more followers - and perhaps attract more wealthy suitors, depending on their ambitions - by hewing more closely to the contemporary Baartman ideal.
Nonetheless, there is a strong legacy of the curvaceous ideal, more so than in other races. It persists to this day.
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One American participant, Ashley, seemed to recognize how entrenched the Baartman ideal has become. “[Baartman] was the platform for stereotypes,” she said. “She set the trend for Black women [to] have these figures and … now these stereotypes are carrying through pop culture.” Mieke, a South African woman, described being proud of her proportions and the way they’re connected to Baartman, saying, “I’m proud of my body because of the resemblance I feel it has with hers.”
However, Lesedi, from South Africa, highlighted this tension. “I feel you do find girls like me who are not proud of what they see when they look in the mirror and they just feel like, ‘I need to drop this off,’” she said. However she added that “you find other girls that are just so happy about it that they twerk.… I guess Sarah Baartman definitely does have an influence, but it’s either positive or negative whether you’re proud to have a bum.”
But is selling this body type always a form of empowerment? Would someone who wasn’t already exploited do it? This may explain why Black women today are conflicted when they think about Baartman.
Body Image Struggles and the Path to Acceptance
Western societal beauty standards have long made women believe they had to be super thin to be attractive, especially those of African descent. Case in point: Sarah Baartman. Another national holiday has arrived, and it’s all about loving your body. Love Your Thighs Day is a day for women to celebrate figures of all different shapes and sizes.
Many Black women have openly shared their struggles with body image, highlighting the pressures and complexities of navigating societal expectations.
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- Chloe Bailey: Has been praised for years for her curvy hips and thighs and takes great pride in them. In a 2022 interview with Allure, she said, “It’s complicated. I’ve always had thick thighs and a butt. But I was growing up at a time when, if someone on television told you that you had a big butt, they meant it as an insult. So I was a little ashamed of my curves. I tried to hide them. It took a very, very long time.
- Kerry Washington: Candidly shared her struggles with body dysmorphia during a press run for her memoir, Thicker Than Water. She told Essence in 2020, “I used food as a way to cope. It was my best friend. I’d eat anything and everything,” she says, “sometimes until I passed out. But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours. Keeping my behavior a secret was painful and isolating. Therapy helped me realize that maybe it’s okay for me to communicate my feelings.
- Tami Roman: Actress and former Basketball Wives star has also suffered from body dysmorphia. “The thing is, I have a condition that’s called body dysmorphia, and I’ve had it since I was 13 years old. It is a mental disorder based on either trauma or genetics, and mine is trauma-based,” she said. “What happens with that is the way I look at myself and the way people see me are two different things. I think about myself as My 600-lb Life. No matter how I look to people, when I look at myself, I can always pick something apart.
- Lizzo: Before her recent weight loss transformation, Lizzo was the face of body positivity. She made music to uplift plus-size women and made sure to use plus-size backup dancers.
- Brandy Norwood: She told Behind the Music in 2012, “I wanted to be so thin. That was my main thing. So I started not taking care of myself-not eating properly, not eating at all, diet pills, regurgitating, and all of these things that girls do. People don’t understand that being the hottest star or making the most money does not mean anything,” she shared.
- Beverly Johnson: She told Page Six in 2024, “We were led to believe that cocaine was not addictive. We didn’t know cocaine was addictive. Everyone used drugs back in the day but that particular drug for models was used because we did not eat.” She recalled, “I remember eating two eggs and a bowl of brown rice a week. I would be shaking in a cab, and I would say pull over because I have to get a bag of M&Ms. We did not eat, and every time you came to work they would say, ‘Yes! Chisel to the bone girl. Yes,’ like congratulating you.
The Body Positivity Movement: A Double-Edged Sword?
The body positivity movement first began as a product of the Fat Rights movement in America, starting with the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), and the Fat Underground movements, respectively. By the 1980s, the movement had begun to pick up speed internationally, with the London Fat Women's Group forming and running for many years. Enter the internet in the 2000s, and the Fat Rights movements picked up speed through social media networks such as Tumblr and Instagram via hashtags such as #BodyPositivity.
These movements were spearheaded by Black plus-sized women and remained relatively niche for a period, until mid-2015 when the body positivity movement began to pick up momentum worldwide, both from individuals looking for safe spaces, to brands hoping to monetize this new movement filled with the next generation of influencers, advocates and models.
However, the commercialization of the movement brought forward the visibility of smaller-sized curve models such as Iskra Lawrence, Ashley Graham and the like. While it was great to see models bigger than a UK size 8 (US size 4) on the catwalk, in lookbooks and online, there was a clear problem; mid-sized models were being touted as plus size.
Advertisers intentionally began to water down fat acceptance to make it more palatable to mainstream audiences - leaving fat people out of its realm altogether. The movement was no longer a safe space for the Black fat women who depended on it and who contributed a lot of emotional and intellectual free labor in the face of trolling and online harassment, only to be overshadowed and ignored.
In 2020, the pandemic hit, forcing all of us to stay and work from home for the majority of the year. In this time, the midsize movement grew expeditiously, seemingly capitalising off the newfound confidence issues suffered by smaller sized people who had gained weight during the pandemic and who were now classed as having ‘mid-sized’ bodies that they did not know how to style.
While it was important for people to seek out support and resources during this time, all this did was further alienate the thoughts and perspectives of the larger plus sized people in the movement. We began to see a plethora of slim, white pretty creators suddenly gain hundreds and thousands of followers and various self-love campaigns based on doing the bare minimum - or even more annoyingly - photographing themselves bent over showing a single roll on their tummy, while plus sized models, advocates and creators struggled to find work due to not fitting the beauty standards of the body positive community.
In my opinion, people have the right to do what they want with their bodies. However, the issue often lies in the 'why'. If someone chooses to lose weight for health or fertility reasons, that's understandable. But if the motivation is purely aesthetic, stemming from internalized fatphobia, that's where the problem arises.
At this point, the onus is on the brands and media outlets who are still beholden to uplifting certain body types, to provide visibility to those who live in the most oppressed bodies. It’s their job to uplift and promote the most marginalized. It’s their job to create clothing for ALL bodies to wear and feel confident in.
Reclaiming Body Positivity for Black Women
Black women have been leaders in the movement against fat phobia for decades. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from a quick glance at the top pictures and videos on Instagram marked #bodypositivity.
Dionne believes the mainstreamed movement has also failed to recognize that racism is at the root of fatphobia. Sabrina Strings, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology at UC Irvine, explores this concept in her book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.
Strings argues that a demonization of fatness grew from the rise of the transatlantic slave trade and the spread of Protestantism. “Racial scientific rhetoric about slavery linked fatness to ‘greedy’ Africans. And religious discourse suggested that overeating was ungodly,” Strings writes. “In the United States, fatness became stigmatized as both Black and sinful.”
While health thought leaders are quick to point out that African American women have the highest rates of obesity or being overweight (about 4 out of 5 African American women are overweight or obese), many don’t acknowledge that obesity could be a manifestation of systemic racism.
Furthermore, like countless popular movements, body positivity has been commercialized. Brands attempt to exploit the movement in part by using plus-size models in advertising campaigns or through partnerships with body-positive Instagram influencers.
A body positivity movement that truly uplifts Black women - and everyone else - must do more than make us feel good about our bodies. It must dismantle structures that made us feel bad about our bodies in the first place.
Black women are refusing to have their bodies policed. Although body positivity was created in the 1960s, recently, the movement has become incredibly popular on social media, with 11.5 million posts in counting with the hashtag #bodypositivity.
Some Black women are no longer concerned with adhering to white beauty aesthetics and are embracing their natural bodies. In doing so, they inspire their loyal followers, fans, and audiences to accept and proudly own every part of their personhood.
| Name | Occupation | Contribution to Body Positivity |
|---|---|---|
| Lizzo | Singer | Promotes body positivity and acceptance through her music and public persona. |
| Lauren Leavell | Personal Trainer | Advocates for inclusive fitness and body liberation. |
| Kellie Brown | Lifestyle Maven | Shares body positivity, fashion, home decor, and fabulous aesthetics. |
| Simone | Influencer | Promotes body positivity and advocates for equal treatment of plus-sized Black women. |
| Tiffany Ima | Body Confidence Coach | Challenges followers to think differently about their bodies and be confident. |
| Jessamyn Stanley | Yoga Teacher | Makes yoga more inclusive and shows how people like her can enjoy fitness. |
