Media has the power to shape what’s socially acceptable. Body image is one thing that doesn’t escape this fact. The resurgence of butt-obsession has the opposite effect that’s intended. It’s one thing to embrace one’s natural or surgically achieved body type, but it’s an entirely different thing to put down women because their butt size isn’t ideal. And what’s ideal isn’t even based on what women like; it’s based on what men find appealing.
“All About That Bass” sung by Meghan Trainor isn’t just about accepting curves and sexuality. The overtone and vibe I get from the song is that if you don’t have a large posterior or curves in general, men won’t want you. Instead of singing “Boys like a little more booty to hold at night,” she might as well sing “Real men like curves. Only dogs go for bones.” Shaming those of us without ideal curves is not accepting one’s body. You can’t say you’re standing up for your curves and then put another group of people down in the process just because they don’t fit within your description of “bass.”
The music video for Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” featuring countless bare rears, is much the same. The lyrics “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun,” implies that women without a little chunk are not desirable to men. As the women in the video show off their glorious rumps, Minaj tells “skinny” women to go screw themselves. Last time I checked that wasn’t a positive message. Minaj isn’t doing any good playing off what men want to degrade those who don’t have it. Respecting only women with junk in the trunk is not respecting women in general. It’s utilizing an already over-sexualized industry to propagate an image that just isn’t realistic: all attractive women must have a tiny waist and a big butt.
Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea have hopped on the butt-train as well. The artists’ video for “Booty” consists of them showing off their “assets,” and it has more than likely broken the record for number of bums in a music video. The song itself isn’t derogatory like the others, but it definitely shows preference for those with “a big fat booty.” The underlying message of the song is that in order to be sexy, you have to have more than a little meat on your bones. Beautiful is now only “booty-ful.”
Degrading others based on the way they look is offensive, especially when it’s women who take men’s preferences into account and make being thin something negative. One specific body type isn’t the most ideal. The movement of women’s acceptance of their bodies should not mean that those who were once typically shamed for having curves are now shaming another image. Uniqueness is what makes beauty, not conformity to a specific shape because we aren’t cookie-cutter sex objects. No one should be shamed for the way their body naturally is; women are so much more than that.
