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Critical Analysis of Video Vixen's and objectification in Hip-Hop culture
- Welcome
The goal of this website is to shed light on the relationship between the oppression of Sara Baartman and the objectification of black women's bodies in popular hip-hop culture.
The tabs above will feature the development of my argument. Each tab can be viewed independently from each other without much overlap. Though I suggest to fully immerse yourself in the progression by viewing the tabs from left to right.
The tabs above will feature the development of my argument. Each tab can be viewed independently from each other without much overlap. Though I suggest to fully immerse yourself in the progression by viewing the tabs from left to right.
WHO IS SARA BAARTMAN?
Sara Baartman was a Khoikhoi woman who traveled from the cape of Africa to London near the beginning of the 19th century. She was escorted by an Englishman with the hopes of displaying her at freak shows in London, specifically her large buttocks and elongated labia. She would soon become known to the West as the Hottentot Venus.
After many months the journey finally ended in London. It wasn't soon after that when Sara began being put on display. She was dressed in "indigenous" garb by her handler to make her look more "authentic." The crowd gazed and prodded her extraordinary derriere as though she were an animal on display. In fact, that is how the London community viewed her: as subhuman.
After months of successful shows, her exotic appeal began to die off. So her handler took her around England and Ireland in hopes of generating more revenue with new crowds. Eventually her popularity died off completely. That is when she was "sold" to a new handler in France.
It was in Paris that Sara spent the last months of her life. While in Paris she was the subject of many experiments by the famous French Naturalist Georges Cuvier. Upon her death, the autopsy was performed by Cuvier and he preserved her brain, skeleton, and vagina to be put on display for the public. He also created a plaster cast of her body to display her extraordinary features long after her death.
Cuvier pointed to her elongated labia as proof that she was a distant relative of the orangutan. Cuvier attempted to use “science” to proof the inferiority of Sara, and all Africans, due to her physical appearance. These studies ushered in the age of scientific racism that was used to justify the oppression of blacks in the West.
