Michelle Obama: Disrupting normative standards of beauty?

(How can one track be so wrong and so right at the same time?)
In a culture where what a woman looks like counts more than what is between her ears, it does make a difference that the first lady is not white, but is black and therefore disrupts normative standards of white femininity. Last week controversy stirred due to a Salon article titled, “First lady got back,” a tongue-in-cheek response to the Obama victory as not only for Obama, but for black women with an overemphasis on her “back” a subject of mass introspection academically and in popular culture as a culture signifier of black women’s beauty and oft sexualization.

It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle’s butt.
Lord knows, it’s time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it’s been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho’s, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they’re certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

Yes, it is imperative to push the boundaries of our racist structures that determine what is beautiful. But something about the unapologetic “booty” gazing of this piece rubs me the wrong way. Latoya hits it saying,

Reader Virigina sent in the tip, writing:

Although Erin Kaplan does make a few decent points about how black women are viewed in this culture, most of the article just reinforces stereotypes. She is defining Michelle Obama and black women in general by their butts and hair. There are so many other traits that she could have discussed.

After reading the full piece, I’m inclined to agree. I get the semi-tongue in cheek tone of the piece, but this article just feels a bit wrong for the audience. Perhaps if it was written for a magazine like Essence or Clutch, which routinely explore the issues of black women and how a lot of our politics are wrapped up in our appearance, I would feel differently about the end result.

And goes on to say, “my problem is that articles about Michelle Obama’s wardrobe, booty, and mom duties are what is fit to publish, what is seen as relevant to a mass audience.” I agree with what Latoya is saying here, at no point in the Salon piece is there some reflection on the fact that an overemphasis on what first ladies look like as opposed to what they think, feel and say is problematic.


But I also agree with this take via RH Reality, via Alternet by Tamura Lomax.

To be sure, the mass production of “Baby Got Back” via radio and television took ongoing essentialist discourses about black female hyper-sexuality to new dimensions. The constant reproduction of the gyrating images became a source of social studies on black female sexuality. This was obviously deeply problematic. However, as stereotypically reductive as this song and video was, in its own way, it also celebrated black women’s bodies. Sure, this so-called celebration reproduced every stereotype about black female sexuality possible. And, by fetishizing black women’s privates, reduced them to mere objects, namely their butts. This was absolutely damaging. However, it also did something else. Through the process of representation (via video imaging), which presented black women’s butts as evidence of stereotypical difference (regarding black female sexuality), many black women, including myself, strangely found a sense of pride in our bodies, specifically our butts. Thus, while Sir Mix-a-Lot (and others) reassigned mythical legacies to our behinds, some black women were re-imagining themselves as subjects with beautiful bodies.

So two things can happen at the same time right? On the one hand we can push for the bodies we want to see in the mainstream, including but not limited to women of color with large butts (victims of brown girl without big butt syndrome stand up!), while problematizing the reality that men are never judged for their bodies, hair, make-up and outfits in the same way that women are and the excess scrutiny on the way that women look, specifically in politics.
In a culture where thin, white standards of beauty are not only upheld, but force different women out of the mainstream through racist and sexist othering of women’s bodies, it is a huge win that the first lady looks different. But the fact that young women are still internalizing the reality that what they look like is going to have a huge impact on where they go and how they get there, well that is just not cool.

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