I was scrolling through a professional photo album from a local racing event when in the midst of photos featuring cars, racing action and spectators of the event, I suddenly found myself face to “face” with a butt. The buttocks in question was large, round, took up most of the photo frame, and I had questions. Who does this butt belong to? Did they enjoy the racing event? Do they know that their butt is randomly featured in an album otherwise dedicated to showcasing the cars and crowd at the event?
It’s common for albums online to have a heavy emphasis on photos of attractive women attending events, but this particular photo didn’t fall into that category. It wasn’t a picture of a woman. It was just a butt. From the angle and distance it was taken, it didn’t seem like the owner of the butt was aware of the picture being taken, unlike the usual pictures with women happily smiling into the camera. I read the enthusiastic comments below the picture and realized that I was alone in my concerns about the faceless, nameless, random buttocks.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. The faceless, nameless bumper has long been a theme in Barbadian culture. In the 90’s Lil Rick inspected bumpers and wasn’t concerned with who or what they were attached to; once they were “heavy”, inspection was passed.
A few years ago, Big Red The DJ gave the command to “bend over and don’t look back”, while this year Hypasounds takes a more liberal approach, giving his dance partner leeway to “peep back when ya pooching back” but in the next breath advises “face down push de bam bam back”. Then another faceless, nameless bumper is causing chaos with Stiffy searching high and low for one that he misplaced in a fete.
But why I can’t look back?
What is behind this growing difficulty in acknowledging and registering the faces of the people who these posteriors belong to? And what exactly is behind this urgency to discourage women from “looking back”? Going beyond the mechanics of the situation (when you bend over and put your face to your legs you will automatically be looking back, and attempting to look forward is a recipe for neck injury), is there something on her face you would prefer not to see? A bumper doesn’t have the range of expressions available to a face. It’s somewhat of a blank canvas. The face of the person the bumper belongs to could be portraying pleasure, joy, frustration, discomfort, pain, blankness or sheer boredom, but for those with a more sensitive ego, an expressionless bumper (whether in the fete or the bedroom) provides the opportunity to only contemplate the possibilities that provide an ego boost, or even worse, to simply avoid contemplating what the other person is experiencing all together.
With respect to the ownerless buttocks in the album; the dismemberment, objectification, exploitation and out of context use of women’s bodies in the media for attention and financial gain is well known and documented—how often have you heard that “sex sells”—but while we’re quicker to recognize and condemn it when we see a sexy commercial or music video on “foreign TV”, we’re a lot slower to recognize and call it out when it occurs in our local context in the form of headless torsos on party flyers, promo girls as party attractions, bikinis on beer ads, or local music videos which comprise of a male entertainer hesitantly swaying back and forth while his female props put in a whole lot of work (you try spinning on your head top then tell me that isn’t talent).
Outside of advertising, one might argue that the celebration of dancing body parts and disinterest in who your partner is once you’re having a good time is understandable for Crop Over, a festival which encourages revellers to free up; to lose themselves, leave their worries at home and party with strangers to their left and right, and to grab somebody and say “hello.”
If this is the case, then what accounts for the stark absence of songs similarly commanding men to perform for women? Can you honestly imagine partying to a song commanding men to “juk down with ya head down” or “pelt waist but doan show ya face”?
Despite the recent controversy sparked by the collaboration between Lady Essence and Rameses Brown on “Blows”, I thought one merit of the song and video was that there was equal participation by both artists in singing and in sharing “blows”. By the end of the video you couldn’t help but remember both Lady Essence’s bumper and her face.
Prior to this, not since the days of Alison Hinds and Lil Rick on “Ruff Winers” have we seen male and female entertainers come together to revel, do bad and brag and show off as equals. Now it’s less about back and forth banter and reciprocity and more about how well the bumper with no name can perform and if the man behind it can handle the performance.
Delving a little deeper into this nameless, faceless bumper celebration; for those who still believe it’s harmless fun, consider the following things:
1) Identity-less rear ends performing acrobatic feats for the entertainment of male onlookers is just one of the many questionable themes in soca music as it relates to women. (We could also talk about the girlfriend/livestock that was “carried” into town one year, the reoccurring theme of questioning women’s hygiene and who their hair and clothes belong to, or lines giving commands for women to prepare to receive various forms of aggressive sexual advances: “turn around right now lemme hit it.”)
2) Breaking women down into ownerless, faceless body parts is a problem because people don’t come in parts, only objects and dead animals do. So when you holler at a big bumper going down the road and don’t look up to see who it’s attached to, whether she appears receptive to your attention, or whether she is displaying clear signs of disinterest or discomfort, you’re treating her the same way you would treat the nameless, faceless tray of shrink wrapped chicken parts at the super market: sizing them up for consumption, with no regards to feelings, rights, humanity or interests because objects have none.
3) All of this matters because it contributes to a larger issue of violence. Factors listed by the CDC as increasing the likelihood of engaging in sexual violence include general aggressiveness, preference for impersonal sex, (the nameless, faceless, face down, ass up, don’t complain type), exposure to sexually explicit media, hostility towards women, societal norms that support sexual violence, societal norms that support male superiority and sexual entitlement (like the multitude of commands in music for women to bounce, bubble, pooch back, spin, balance etc. as a performance for their male counterparts), and societal norms that maintain women’s inferiority and sexual submissiveness (like the ogling of the big butt going down the street and the expectation that the owner of it should be polite and receptive to attention at all times).
These factors should be carefully considered and highlighted given that gender based violence is a well-established issue in the Caribbean, and Barbados is one of several Caribbean countries whose rape rate falls above the worldwide average.
Do a handful of songs that glamourize sexual aggression and reduce women to body parts significantly contribute to these statistics? Probably not. But music is from and for the people. While these types of songs are in the minority, they are often among the most popular and their lyrics are seldom questioned or condemned. This speaks to the existence of a pervasive, harmful mentality and attitude towards women, one that many of us still aren’t fully aware of, and one that should be steadfastly challenged.
It also points towards the less talked about pressure placed upon men to model hyper-masculine behaviour (another risk factor for perpetrating sexual violence). Behind these faceless, nameless butts may be a photographer feeling pressured to seem more “manly” or relevant by focusing on women’s bodies, a street side lurker trying to fit in to the daily sea of harassment while quietly pondering, “What am I doing with my life?”, an entertainer wondering why their talent and creativity can’t be enough to appeal to their audience without the obligatory prop of scantily-clad, gyrating back up dancers; or a tired feter who would prefer to tap out, but if he does, he risks being relentlessly teased about how he “couldn’t handle de bumpa”. That’s for starters. There is also a section of our society that believes that men cannot be victims of sexual violence. Part of the “reasoning” behind this is the erroneous belief that men always want sex, are always ready for it, and should be able to handle everything—be it bumpers or whatever else life has to throw at them.
No Ifs, Ands Or Butts?
I understand and share the desire to celebrate and admire shapely butts. Celebrating the butt can form a part of our identity as Caribbean women and they should be highlighted and featured just as any other culture would celebrate the physical traits which are common among their members.
But there are stark differences between respectful celebration and admiration, and exploitation and objectification.
Admiration would be asking the owner of a magnificent butt whether they consent to having their derriere featured online and adding humanity to it by sharing their name, face and story. Admiration and celebration would be a song about Jennifer; multi-faceted human with a name, face, story and personality, who is a business woman by day, and twerker extraordinaire by night. Admiration would be inviting your dance partner to dance however she sees fit—face up, down or sideways—and taking time to say hello (and get consent) face to face (as a bonus, this also allows you to avoid desperately trying to relocate a lost bumper in a dark fete). Admiration is understanding that while it’s perfectly natural to look at a body part that you find attractive, it is never natural to make the owner feel uncomfortable or dehumanised as you do so.
Conversely, exploitation is using photos of body parts to gain followers, comments and likes without consent from or reciprocity to the owner of those parts. Objectification is failing to understand that a faceless, nameless buttocks fits in perfectly in an underwear ad, but at a car racing event? Not so much. Exploitation is the fact that while many entertainers use lyrics about voluptuous feminine body parts to boost interest and sales, they seldom if ever use the power and reach afforded by the popularity of their music to urge the public to protect those lucrative bumpers from harassment, assault, violence or abuse.
Exploitation and objectification of big, black butts is nothing new; it dates back to slavery. The fetishization of Black women’s behinds was used to humiliate and degrade them. Most famously, Sara ‘Saartjie’ Baartman was a female slave, caged and abused for being born with a big butt. With such horrific history, is the fetishization, objectification and exploitation of Black women’s bodies a legacy that we want to continue?
And to the owners of the butts that figuratively and literally prop up a good part of our culture: understand your value. What would our Crop Over festival look like if entertainers and promoters couldn’t rely on women’s bodies for song lyrics, eye-grabbing videos, and flyers and ads that draw patrons to parties?
Women add significant value to our culture, and it is only fair that we hold ourselves and our society accountable for showing consideration and respect in dismantling the dangerous and harmful attitudes within our culture that hurt them. It is only fair that we demand that in reciprocation for the value we give, that value be added to us.
So that bumper has an owner with a personality, a story, a face and a name. Here’s encouraging us to put some “respeck” on it.
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