Carla Jenkins: On The Prospect of a Large Derrière

‘Anaconda’ is not a celebration of all shapes and sizes.


I have found myself, this week, baffled at another prospect of our popular culture of today: the big booty.

It was a rainy Thursday night, and I was sitting in my boyfriends’ house whilst him, his flat-mates and I watched the music video for the latest Nicki Minaj wonder, ‘Anaconda’. (If you haven’t seen it yet, then seriously, get your act in order. Or maybe, don’t bother. You’re probably better retaining some of your dignified innocence)

Whilst their jaws duly dropped, I became entranced at the floor-humping and the booty-thumping of Minaj and her dancers. A bitter taste began to form in my mouth, and I was left with an unanswered disquiet that I’ve been musing over ever since: why is everyone so obsessed with big bums? Has this always been a thing? And more importantly, should girls want a big bum because we are inspired by other women with brilliant backsides, who have the confidence to shake, rattle and roll those curves until the idea of a thigh-gap immediately dissipates…or are we being told we should want a big bum, so that our man in question’s ‘anaconda’ will still want a piece of it?

Now I’m not an idiot. Massive arses have always been a thing, and girls who have them (and flaunt them) aren’t unfamiliar to us. In fact, there are a plethora of them in all colours, shapes and sizes (the bum being a constant, of course) from all over the globe, and just as many have been actively twerking since well before the naughties, no matter what Miley wants us to think; Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Shakira, J-lo (the apparent first mover of this massive movement) … the list is endless. And now, in the 21st century, we’ve been hit with a further wave of them, with a few (A FEW) being celebrated for what seems to be nothing else apart from their rear end – Kim K, Nicki Minaj, Miley, Rihanna Jen Selter, and even someone a bit closer to home, in the form of Pippa Middleton.

Big bums are always going to be part of life as women – after all, our bodies are designed to bear children. And I, as a mere mortal, untouched by the glitter dust and mysterious figure-enhancing luck that fame brings, am all for advocating a more realistic bodily shape to popularize. I love, love, love that Rihanna can walk about with nothing but a nude diamante body suit on, and not get bombed, shot or heckled, but rather can pick up a Fashion Icon of the Year award. I love that we are moving from the impossible-for-anyone-but-Wintour figure ideals, and I love that there are more shapes being celebrated than the usual stick-thin-thigh-gap -gazelles that are prancing down the A/W14 catwalks.

However, what I saw in that video was NOT the celebration of curves and the embracing of the realistic – and more feminine – womanly shape. It was not the lambasting of the unrealism in thigh-gap desires (Minaj, herself, has so much silicone injected into her back cheeks that she has a thigh-gap just from walking). When Minaj croones ‘fuck those skinny bitches in the club / I wanna see all the big fat ass bitches in the motherfucking club’, she is not appealing to women of all shapes and sizes to come out and celebrate (or shake) what god gave them. Rather, in-between squirting cream on her tits and deep-throating a banana (and latterly, rapping), Minaj advocates exactly what we already know in the most paradoxical way: that sex sells, and by re-defining and promoting the body that we know – or we think we know –most men drool over, she can sell 300,000 copies in less than two weeks. She poisons what we’ve worked hard for, showing the fluidity and flippancy of pop-culture: next month, it’ll be knobbly kneecaps, or skinny calves anyway.

Is this feminism? Feminism: equality for men and woman. This is not feminism: Drake didn’t take his jeans off and shake his arse in Minaj’s’ face to ensure his cameo role. This is not a celebration of different body shapes and sizes. This is not a siren-call for the girls with peachy, plum like backsides to ‘fuck the skinny bitches in the club.’ This is Minaj, and her suited and booted group of (most likely, all male) exectives tapping into the market, seeing what is top of the list and turning it inside out, baring its insides for all its worth. I, for one, am ashamed to even be separating the groups of girls in this article into ‘big-ass bitches’ and ‘skinny motherfuckers’ to make my point, and so I have a plea:

Ladies and gentlemen, the next time you hear Anaconda in the club, find the nearest (willing) person to you – whether or not it’s a boy with a straight up and down rear end or a girl with a perfect pear/apple/orange/banana shaped figure – and shake your ass in Minaj’s face. Don’t shake to the song, or the beat or its message. Don’t shake for her, or for anyone else but yourself. Shake your glorious booty for your own booty’s sake, and celebrate the fact that men and woman can do this together.