The conversations surrounding the exploitation of black bodies and culture by mainstream media is certainly a hot button topic and The New York Times has added heat to the fire.
The New York publication recently dropped this review of the play Venus review from their chief theater critic Ben Brantley, who didn't even get one sentence into his review before comparing Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman, an African woman exhibited around Europe under the name Hottentot Venus for her full figure to — wait for it — Kim Kardashian.
*record scratch*
Venus, written by Suzan-Lori Parks, tells the tragic tale of Baartman's life.
Brantley, who seems to have missed the point of the play, began his review with the line: “Attention, please, those of you whose greatest ambition is to acquire the traffic-stopping body of Kim Kardashian. There is a less drastic alternative to costly and dangerous buttocks implants."
He continued, “To wit: the fulsomely padded body stocking that is being modeled with flair and poignancy by Zainab Jah in the title role … It’s doubtful as to how comfortable such a stocking is as 24-hour wear. But, it has the great advantage of not being permanent.”
The real point here is that Baartman was a South African woman who was forced to work in the European circus and Parisian zoo, with white spectators gawking at her large buttocks and elongated labia, the former of which was the result of a genetic trait called steatopygia. Her body was sexualized by Europeans at the 19th century "freak show," amazed that her body was unlike those of white women.
Instead of digging into all of that, Brantley decided to take the opportunity to pen a tone deaf and offensive screed on the perils and shallowness of plastic surgery.
While Brantley’s review did manage to point out some of the racism Baartman endured, he invalidated that point by claiming Baartman was “complicit in her own exploitation” after stating she was “seduced in South Africa with promises of lucre by a fly-by-night entrepreneur.”
The statement reeks of victim-blaming, given the fact that Baartman came to Europe under the coercion of those with far greater power and influence.
“To contemporary eyes, Ms. Jah’s artificial figure doesn’t look all that different from the bodies of celebrity goddesses who populate People and The Daily Mail wearing second-skin dresses,” Brantley went on to conclude. “One hopes that these women own their bodies — and their images — in a way that was tragically denied Saartjie Baartman.”
In reality, the glamorization of non-black women with black bodies is just an extension of the very same oversexualization and exploitation that so captivated white audiences that came to gape at Baartman. The very things black women were — and still are — objectified for, non-black women adopt for personal profit. Baartman's natural body was the beginning of this vicious cycle, and she certainly isn't a poster woman for the evils of plastic surgery.
The Times initially shared the article on Twitter, with a title focusing on Kardashian's Baartman similarities:
Of course, hell hath no fury than Black Twitter scorned:
Photos: Twitter
The tweet has since been deleted; but the very vexing article remains.
See, this is what happens when you don't allow black women to tell or at the very least contribute to their own stories. Aside from not doing proper research, Brantley certainly has no personal or empathetic ties to Saartjie Baartman or her image and it certainly showed in that outrageous review.
