In March, Erykah Badu was honored with the Icon Award at Billboard’s 2025 Women in Music Awards. The award acknowledged Badu’s contributions to music, but it was her fashion prowess that stole the show. Made in collaboration with Texas-born designer Myah Hasbany (Badu and Hasbany attended the same high school), the “booty suit” looks exactly like the name suggests. The flesh-toned suit featured an exaggerated lower half, protuberantly knit in the fashion of a large buttock with matching woven thighs and a cone-shaped bust.
Opinions on the look were mixed, with some pointing out that the look resembled a “botched” BBL or “BBHell,” as one user shared. Others investigated a potential deeper meaning behind the bulbous look, specifically as it relates to the historical perversion of Black bodies throughout history.
Was Erykah Badu’s ‘booty suit’ an homage to Sarah Baartman?
Badu captioned a video sharing the look, “A lil Hippy. Rise of the dark divine feminine” — and commenters were quick to clock the similarities between Badu’s look and the real-life appearance of Sarah Baartman.
Born in 1789, Baartman was a Khoekhoe woman who was enslaved and forced on display at “freak shows,” where she was inhumanely paraded around in horrific conditions. Baartman was believed to have had lipedema, a condition causing an abnormal distribution of fat, particularly in the thighs, calves and buttocks. Her appearance was mocked and ridiculed by the white masses, and even in death, she was not safe from the cruel gaze of onlookers. She died in 1815, but her brain, skeleton and genitals were preserved and displayed at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris for 150 years. It wasn’t until 2002 that her body was returned to South Africa, and she was able to be buried in her native village of Hankey.
The continuous exploitation of Black Bodies
The commodification of Black bodies from subjects of mockery to vessels of imitation is a well-studied and discussed phenomenon, but Badu’s outfit, which many took as an unofficial homage to Baartman, is certainly the most visually overt in recent years.
Current cultural shifts are trending toward conservative ideals, à la thinness, whiteness and general anti-Blackness, so Badu wearing the outfit strikes while the societal iron is particularly hot. It can’t be said with absolute certainty whether or not Badu’s outfit was an intentional commentary on the objectification and subsequent disregard of Black bodies But as is the case with most artistic displays, the intended message often falls second to what the culture decides to extrapolate as its true message. Badu has long since established herself as a fashion icon — rightfully receiving the CFDA’s 2024 Fashion Icon award, but this latest venture’s reach supersedes the runway.
