Being a young African -American with African and Caribbean roots really made me want to research and get to know my roots(What they don't teach in the public school system). I didn't learn who women like Phyllis Wheatley, Janet Collins and Saartjie "Sara" Baartman were. I was honored to discover that Phyllis Wheatley was the first African American published poet. I was so happy to know that Janet Collins was a ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She performed on Broadway, in films, and appeared frequently on television. I felt disrespected to know that
Saartjie "Sara" Baartman was apart of a freak show due to her enormous breasts, enlarged hips and over sized buttocks. She had steatopygia. Steatopygia is is a genetic characteristic generally prevalent in women of African origin, most notably among though not limited to the Khoisan.
Saartije was a KhoiKhoi woman from South Africa. she was sold to London by an enterprising Scottish doctor named
Alexander Dunlop, accompanied by a showman named Hendrik Cesars. She
spent four years in Britain being exhibited for her large buttocks. The labia minora or inner lips, of the ordinary female genitalia are greatly enlarged in
Khoi-San women, and may hang down three or four inches below the vulva when women stand, thus giving the impression of a separate and enveloping curtain of skin".
In the 1800s, people in London were able to pay two shillings apiece to
gaze upon her body in wonder. Baartman was considered a freak of
nature. For extra pay, one could even poke her with a stick or finger.
Baartman never allowed this trait to be exhibited while she was alive,
and an account of her appearance in London in 1810 makes it clear that she was wearing a garment, although a tight-fitting one.
Her treatment caught the attention of British
abolitionists, who tried to rescue her, but she claimed that she had
come to London on her own accord. In 1814, after Dunlop's death, she
traveled to Paris. With two consecutive showmen, Henry Taylor and S.
Reaux, she amused onlookers who frequented the Palais-Royal. She was
subjected to examination by Georges Cuvier, a professor of comparative
anatomy at the Museum of Natural History. In the post- Napoleonic era France, sideshows like the Hottentot Venus lost their appeal. Baartman
lived on in poverty, and died in Paris of an undetermined inflammatory
disease in December 1815. After her death, Cuvier dissected her body,
then displayed her remains. For more than a century and a half, visitors
to the Museum of Man in Paris could view her brain, skeleton and genitalia until she was buried.
Although Baartman refused
to be an experiment while she was alive. With permission from police,
Cuvier, who had amassed the world's largest collection of human and
animal specimens, conducted an autopsy on Baartman's dead body. First he
made a cast of her body, then he preserved her brain and genitals.
Cuvier concluded that "the Hottentots" were closer to great Apes than humans. The rest of Baartman's flesh was boiled down to bones for
Cuvier's collection and displayed for years afterward. Baartman's body
did not receive a proper burial until much later.
After her death, Sarah Baartman's body underwent dissection and
'analysis' of her brain, organs, genitalia and buttocks. Blaineville and
Cuvier had asked Baartman to allow them to study her nude while she had
been alive and she had refused them this request. No consent had been
given by Baartman to allow scientists to see, touch or use her body for
'scientific' purposes after her death.
Della Perry and Ruth Whiteside are feminist theorists who have
discussed how the label 'disability' and the term 'biological
determinism' have affected the exploitation, discrimination and abuse of
women and people of African descent. They comment on how differences in
biology have dictated a social hierarchy and stratification.
Sara Baartman's organs, genitalia and buttocks were thought to be
evidence of her sexual primitivism and intellectual equality with that
of an orangutan.
During the lengthy negotiation to have Baartman's body returned to
her home country after her death, the assistant curator of Musee de l'
homme, Philippe Mennecier argued against her return stating: "we never
know what science will be able to tell us in the future. If she is
buried, this chance will be lost ... for us she remains a very important
treasure." According to Sadiah Qureshi, due to the continued treatment
of Baartman's body as a cultural artifact, Philippe Mennecier's
statement is contemporary evidence of the same type of ideology that
surrounded Saartjie Baartman's body while she was alive in the 19th
century.
Media representation and feminist criticism
In November 2014,
Paper Magazine released a cover of Kim Kardashian
in which she was illustrated as balancing a champagne bottle on her
extended rear. The cover received much literary criticism for endorsing
"the exploitation and fetishism of the black female body."
The photo has received much criticism and commentary on mimicking the
way in which Baartman was represented as the "Hottentot Venus" during
the 19th century.
According to writer Geneva S. Thomas, anyone that is aware of black
women's history under colonialist influence would consequentially be
aware that Kardashian's photo easily elicits memory regarding the visual
representation of Baartman.
Similarly, Baartman and other black female slaves were illustrated and
depicted in a specific form to identify features, which were seen as
proof of ideologies regarding black female primitivism.
Young boys and so called men in the new generation often refer to women mainly African American women as
THOTS. That horrible nasty word stemmed from from her nickname Hottentot Venus. The KKK even adopted the term during slavery that is how they referred to black women.
http://keediescorner.com/2014/08/02/the-origin-of-the-word-thot/
Saartjie Baartman's grave, on a hill overlooking
Hankey in the
Gamtoos River Valley, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Signboard at the grave, including the poem by
