The Perfect A

The media, predictably, were quick to denigrate and pounce on hip hop music when Claudia Aderetomi travelled to a dodgy hotel in America to get industrial grade silicone injected into her butt cheeks, allegedly so that she would be able to break into the music video industry. Suddenly, hip hop music became a source of condemnation and derision, and every columnist in the mainstream press clamoured to criticize its treatment of black women. Women like Nicki Minaj and Buffy the Butt were held up as representing the aspirations of black girls- full figured, with a slim waist and a huge undimpled (preferably fake) backside. Apparently, we all want this. Yeah, right.

Never mind that free from the influence of black music, hundreds of women die from each year from cosmetic surgery, Caucasian Lidviyan Selaya died in December 2010 in Florida after suffering cardiac arrest after liposuction, Chinese singer Wang Bei died in November 2010 after undergoing a facial grinding procedure, and Latin American Solange Magnano, a beauty queen, died from a pulmonary embolism after a gluteoplasty (butt lift). Who can also forget Donda West, Kanye’s mum, who died from a heart attack a day after a liposuction procedure. I doubt that she was vying for a part in a hip hop video or needed the money to forge a video hunny career.

The media missed the point, as usual. While I do not deny that music videos present an ideal that few can live up to, the problem is not hip hop music or the “careers” of video girls or even the clichéd trotted out objectification of women. The problem is that we live in a society that focuses, thrives and makes it profitable for us to exist in a permanent state of dissatisfaction with ourselves and our bodies. Mainstream media fails to mention that black women used to always be derided by the mainstream media for not having the perfect lithe, sinewy bodies. A big bottom was an unsightly thing, to be laughed at or burned away on a treadmill, instead of a natural genetic feature to be celebrated and acknowledged as an evolutionary symbol of our femininity. Mainstream media conveniently omits that most black women cannot obtain jeans that pull over our buttocks in the UK- the High Street is a notoriously difficult place to shop for me, and I do not have a bigger than average bottom. Gym classes that focus on problem areas include “legs, bums and tums”, making it clear that a bottom that sticks out is considered unsightly and a problem. Who could forget “I like big butts and I cannot lie”, the opening line in Baby Got Back? The very hip hop music which is now criticised was a proud rebellion against that type of derision of our bodies, and while it is indeed a shame that we have now reached the point when it has exerted a pressure of its own, we cannot forget that it is really the exception to the fash-rule.

Claudia Aderotomi was a fallen soldier in the universal battle for female perfection. We have all had those moments of self denial where we wonder whether mornings at the gym or denying ourselves chips is really worth it and feel like zapping it all away to achieve what we feel would be a perfect figure or a perfect weight. Just as teenagers at school are no longer required to obtain plain As and must distinguish ourselves by having A*s and just as Sainsburys only sells Grade A carrots with no bumps or knobs or other physical deformities, we live in a society where we feel that we must be a perfect A. Regrettably, for every Claudia, there is a Jenny and an Emily in the search for perfection- a perkier breast or a flatter tummy, hopefully we realise that we don’t need to die to validate our selves and our bodies.