DUTY TO BOOTY

From designer derrière to booty shaking branding, Richard Smith presents a cheeky piece, pertaining to contemporary posterior promotion in the pop cultural sphere.

“Free your mind and your ass will follow ” – Funkadelic, 1971
"(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", K.C. And The Sunshine Band, 1976
“ ’Cause my body’s too bootylicious for ya babe ” – Destiny’s Child, 2001

As the rise of ‘personal’ branding in the early years of the 21st century has taken affect, it is interesting to examine its impact on pop culture and the extension of branding to all aspects of the human form. Not only are some of us branding our personalities (EMO versus NEO-RAVER, if you have been living in a cave lately), even our physical features are being given consumer oriented treatments. It is about being seen, being noticed, being different. It’s about personal expression, and ultimately, money.

In so-called primitive cultures the body was/is decorated and in some cases mutilated as an object/space of communication and thus identity. However, in those cultures, the intention of the expression is to enable identification with and within a group or differentiation from other groups. The 21st Century trend however, is quite the opposite when it comes to trendsetters – they wish to be totally unique. The followers of course are merely copying to belong.

The various examples of pop celebrities heavily insuring certain body parts - specific to their stage personas - is evidence of the commodification of physical features for financial gain. Examples such as Mariah Carey’s legs, or even Tom Jones chest hair are obvious examples, although many of these “precautions” have more to do with publicity where the marketing value offsets any premiums. One wonders if Barbara Streisand has thought about insuring her nose? [1]

The resulting media hype has built an appetite in mainstream culture for the aesthetic enhancing of physical features, from the explosion of personal grooming to encompass a wide and ever expanding range of (sometimes brutal) cosmetic surgeries.

Since ancient times, the battle against the appearance of ageing has been fought - we only need think of Cleopatra’s milk bath for example. Yet cosmetic surgery in the 21st century has moved beyond merely artificially stemming the signs of ageing to more extreme measures of body enhancement, and in some cases, complete identity overhaul.

Designer bodies are now possible through a range of procedures, some using the body’s own resources [eg lipo fat transfer], and some using prosthetics. The very common silicon breast implant is now complimented with such procedures for cheeks too, and now for your ultimate designer derrière we have… the butt enhancement! [2]

The (ab)use of naturally “beautiful” – i.e. unenhanced - celebrities to promote artificial procedures is also an amusing phenomenon. Most plastic surgeons cite celebrity features on their menu, for example in the butt enhancement area to one could order the “Jennifer Lopez”, as opposed to the “Beyonce Knowles” or the “Kim Kardashian”, but these celebrities own ‘asses’ are very much simply what their mammas gave ‘em. [3]

So what underlies “the big booty” enhancement trend? Some argue for the acceptance of these enhancements on the grounds that they promote a more “natural” and “healthier” looking figure in women – a backlash against the Size 0 emaciated model stereotype. Although this begs the observation: it is all-and-well encouraging a healthier ‘look’, but the means hardly justify the er, ends.

So how would one achieve this illusive perfect posterior, naturally? First of all, it helps to be black, but of course it is not essential. Anyone can try it.

To quote seminal 70’s funk pioneers, Funkadelic, “Free your mind and your ass will follow”!

If we trace the roots of this cultural phenomenon we find that naturally endowed features have been developing on the bodies of professional dancers such as Beyonce, J-Lo and Paula Abdul for ages as a matter of course – a hazard of the job so to speak - but for the cultural embracing and celebration of “Booty”, we need to look at the influence of African and Latin-American culture on R&B and Pop, steeped as it is on sexy soul, sultry jazz and the genetic outcomes of the slave trade that made it all come together.

Indeed, only now that America is emerging from a very dark chapter in its history, is “Booty” being given a liberated platform for the celebration of black femininity. It is no secret that “well rounded” female buttocks have long been perceived as desirable and beautiful within both ‘black’ and ‘white’ cultures – it is just that we are only recently being re-exposed to it. Some would argue overexposed, but that, as in most cultural things, is a simply a matter of taste.

There have been many articles examining the role of art and fashion in determining aesthetic tastes of the masses, and it seems the epoch of the ‘fourteen-year-old-boy-ass-as-prototype-for female-supermodel” is waning. At the moment, the taste for Booty of both the ‘black’ and ‘white’ variety is accelerating. There are websites that give step-by-step instructions on how to “shake that ass like Beyonce”. To quote:

“Angelina has the lips, Jessica Simpson has the boobs and Cameron Diaz has the legs. Yet no one has mastered body-part marketing like Beyonce. This woman's ass has its own empire. You may not control the world with your backside, but you can shake it with the best of them anyway. Follow these steps to be an ass-shaking diva in your own home.” [4]

References:

[1] http://www.cracked.com/article_15887_6-strangest-tales-celebrity-bo...
[2] http://www.the-cosmetic-surgery-directory.com/article_buttock.html
[3] http://www.yournewbodyblog.com/2008/07/how-big-is-butt-enhancement/
[4] http://www.ehow.com/how_2058316_shake-that-ass-like-beyonce.html
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/booty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootylicious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booty_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Your_Mind...And_Your_Ass_Will_Follow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Shake,_Shake,_Shake)_Shake_Your_Booty
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=303392
http://www.articlesbase.com/plastic-surgeries-articles/the-big-boot...
http://www.celebitchy.com/4173/celebrity_body_insurance/
http://www.metrolyrics.com/shake-your-booty-lyrics-kc-and-the-sunsh...
http://www.metrolyrics.com/shake-your-groove-thing-lyrics-peaches.html

Note: Editing and additional words by Don Albert