So Miley Cyrus at the VMAs – that was controversial, wasn’t it? Given the Twitter storm and the column inches she generated, you could be forgiven for thinking that Cyrus’s performance was a more significant world event than, let’s say, the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria and more culturally noteworthy than the death of Seamus Heaney.

This column is not about Cyrus, at least not as such. Instead it’s about buttocks. The VMA controversy makes a good starting-off point, because amongst all the anger, opinion pieces and general uproar there were two things upon which everyone broadly agreed: (1) Miley hasn’t got much in the way of an arse; and (2) without one, twerking is a no-go.
The ample arse has gone under some serious cultural revision in the last twenty years or so – or perhaps I should say that the sexual allure of a generous gluteus maximus has not so much been discovered as rediscovered. Big bums have always been popular – we just seemed to have forgotten that for a while.
Buttock augmentation surgery has become increasingly common, although nowhere near as popular as breast enhancements or tummy tucks, and padded underwear to put some junk in your trunk were introduced in Penney’s earlier this year.
Although there is a long history of seeing the buttocks as a thing of beauty, there is also a parallel culture, at least in the West, of treating the backside as ridiculous or obscene. Granted, the butt is associated with defecation and flatulence (she says, being all proper) and these can be foul or funny, depending on the circumstances.
Add to that the fact that there is no escaping the arse’s association with sex – it is situated right next to the genitals and bending over not only displays the sex organs but is seen as an invitation to have sex whether you are a man or a monkey.
The ancient Greeks were much enamoured with the derriere, partly because of its pleasing curvature but also because a fleshy behind was seen as a uniquely human physical trait. Later European civilizations believed that the arse distinguished us from demons and monsters, which were presumed, like animals, to be flat-bottomed. Best of all you could get Satan to stop tempting or tormenting you by flashing your bare buttocks, as this reminded the Prince of Darkness that he was under-endowed and sent him scurrying away. Apparently.
There are various hypotheses as to why humans have such big behinds – at least relative to our ape cousins – and most of them have to do with sex. In the animal kingdom a buttocks display is generally the precursor to sex. When she is ovulating, a female monkey’s backside will become swollen and more conspicuous, thus signalling her fertility. Because humans don’t have a mating season, our buttocks are always on display and constantly sending out erotic signals to potential mates – at least that’s
the theory.
The backside has always been associated with sexuality, and fashion is testament to that – mini-skirts and tight jeans all display the arse to advantage – but in the last two decades, big bums have been seen as particularly desirable, often more so than small pert ones.
This is partly due to the popularity of songs extolling the virtue of a plentiful posterior. Queen may have sung about “fat bottomed girls” back in the late 1970s, but this was an anthem to “lardy ladies” (their words, not mine). However from the early 1990s, artists like Sir Mix-a-Lot, Sisquó, Groove Armada and Destiny’s Child all had hits giving props to the behind, particularly bigger behinds. It’s no coincidence that “bootylicious” made it into the Oxford English dictionary two years after the release of the Destiny’s Child song of the same name.
Nor is it a coincidence that the mainstreaming of arse-positive songs occurred at the same time that twerking was introduced into hip-hop culture. Twerking is said to have originated in West Africa and was popularised in Jamaican dance halls before it made its way into hip-hop clubs in the early 1990s. It’s been around for a while, but this year’s VMAs is the first time it has been performed in public by a blonde former Disney princesses with an unattractive 36-year-old married man to the tune of a summer hit.
Cyrus’ performance was problematic not only for those reasons – perhaps most importantly, her groping of her backing dancers’ buttocks correlates with a troubling history of cultural stereotypes, assumptions and violence.
Although of course many women across the world have them, big behinds are frequently associated with women of colour, particularly African and Latina bodies – think Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Serena Williams and Nicki Minaj, all of whose buttocks are inextricably entwined with their star personae.
The African-American academic Patricia Hill Collins has argued that the fetishisation of bigger behinds in popular culture and pornography has its roots in racist assumptions about the supposed promiscuity of black women. Hill Collins notes that Sarah Baartmann, the so-called ‘Hottentot Venus’, was displayed at fashionable parties in nineteenth century Europe. Bartmann was famed for her steatopygia – that is, large, protruding buttocks – which were seen as evidence of a deviant African sexuality.
After her death Bartmann was dissected and her buttocks put on display in Paris – thus treating her as a sexual and exotic “freak” long after her death. Despite a request from Nelson Mandela in 1994, it wasn’t until 2002 that Bartmann’s remains were repatriated to South Africa and buried.
Larger buttocks were associated with insatiable sexuality and Hill Collins argues that the supposed sexual voraciousness of African women was seen as a justification for the widespread rape of slave women in the antebellum South. If black women could be regarded as lascivious Jezebels, then it was impossible to rape them – they were simply ‘asking for it’.
Unfortunately the idea of the lustful African Jezebel has not been entirely eradicated from contemporary culture; indeed, as it is sometimes incorporated into popular African-American culture, it is not an easy stereotype to unpick.
Hill Collins notes that this is a stereotype both imposed on and used by African-Americans: “Whereas images of Black women as sexually aggressive certainly pervade popular culture overall, the image of the hoochie seems to have permeated everyday Black culture in entirely new ways… The issue here lies in African-American acceptance of such images. African-American men and women alike routinely do not challenge these and other portrayals of Black women as ‘hoochies’ within Black popular culture.”
Twerking, and other forms of butt display such as crunking and booty tooching, may be part of African-American culture, but they are only a small part. Unfortunately, because of the long history of associating African women’s bodies with sexual deviance, it is one which over-determines how African-American women are portrayed in popular images across race boundaries.
In a situation like this, the idea that Miley Cyrus is making money by appropriating stereotypical portrayals of black sexuality for which black women themselves are frequently demonized is bound to rankle.
Despite all this, the greater acceptance of larger buttocks has, in itself, to be seen as a good thing. Mainstream Western culture has long regarded blue eyes, blonde hair and skinny bodies as the epitome of female beauty, so a greater inclusiveness is to be welcomed.
I should admit I have a personal reason for this – the Sexton women all have big arses. It should make me happy that what was seen as a flaw is now extolled as a virtue, and it would if my flat-bottomed friends were not constantly being reminded – like Satan in days of old – of their relative lack thereof.
You can’t win. Or can you?