Social Identity
A look into how we construct our identity via societal constructions
How do we construct our identity?
“In constructing an identity, one draws, among other things, on the kinds of person available in one’s society… These notions provide loose norms or models, which play a role in shaping our plans of life. Collective identities, in short, provide what we might call scripts: narratives that people can use in shaping their projects and in telling their life stories” - Kwame Anthony Appiah
How does this concept relate to Baartman and hip-hop culture?
Appiah's identity theory creates what he calls the "social scriptorium." It is within the sphere that scripts are created and where we pick and choose elements of society to construct our own identity. It is within the "social scriptorium" that scripts can be introduced with the purpose and power to control the public.
One particular script is that of Sara Baartman. Hip-hop culture has evolved the original scripts laid about for Sara Baartman (see side panel) in relationship with black female identity to fit a modern context. The themes achieve the same end. The identity that becomes propagated in popular music videos is that of a black woman who has a large buttocks. One who also must be sexually promiscuous and aggressive. She is referred to as a “bitch,” which plays on the socially constructed notion that black women are “animalistic.” Whereas bitch means female dog.
Social Scripts, Social Control and Beauty
The American notion of beauty is a script meant to control. It isn’t however, meant to control the appearance of women, but rather meant to use appearance as a form of control over women. In Naomi Wolf’s essay “The Beauty Myth,” she states that:
“In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in that women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves” (Wolf 121)
Appiah gives his theory of how we form our own identities. It is from society that we pick out pieces to make us who we are and it is also society that tells us which pieces we should pick out.
Wolf’s beauty myth is where society tells women what pieces they should pick out when it comes to appearance. Baartman’s script is a part of the hierarchy explained by Wolf’s beauty myth; Baartman’s script was created to tell specifically what black women should pick out. Just as “the beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance” (Wolf 122) the script laid out by Western conceptions of Baartman are also prescribing behavior, rather than simply appearance.
Modern Day Venus? You be the judge.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT