This is my ass.
For the last ten or so years every form of mass media has told me that this is not only the best way of measuring my worth as a Black woman, its also innately low class while being the only reason any man would put up with me.
My Black ass, a gift and a curse.
When I was growing up the worst slight a boy could hurl was that you had a “white girl ass”. Of course most of those same boys went home and fantasized about white porn stars or had Carmen Electra hanging in their locker.
It was always funny to me that the Black boys I went to church with mocked me for having no ass while the White and Asian boys at school acted like I had a Buick in my pants.
When I first started dancing my main draw was my agile booty, after years of dancehall dancing I could isolate and oscillate my ass like programmed machine. While I never felt ashamed doing that on stage, when a Korean boyfriend asked me to shake my ass like a Black girl for him it left me feeling some type a way. Did he look at me and see just a big black booty?
While most people can say that American Black culture has always had a boner for a shapely woman it only in the last decade or so where it reached fever pitch. Women are not only dying for a big butt, but also disfiguring themselves.
Hot shit NOT found here.
I resent the fact that the complex and highly nuanced beauty of all women from the African Diaspora has been boiled down too just ass. Even more disturbingly some women rush to embrace this like it’s a badge of honor. Everyone has an ass. EVERYONE.
Black women were celebrating their booties for centuries but the American mainstream only started to take notice when J.lo , Vida Guerra and other Latinas gained popularity during the “Latin Explosion”. So really if Black women were only good for asses, but the asses of a light skinned Latina is “the best ass” Where does that leave black women?
It leaves us exactly where we started, grasping for appreciation for something, ANYTHING. The sad thing is , we are more than the sum of our parts, deeper than skin tone and should not be defined by the texture of our hair.
So if you tell me you love Black women you better prove to me that this thickness isn’t the only thing you see.
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