Desire or Design: The Body Politics Behind the BBL Era and the Black Female Body
As a Black woman, I’ve been reflecting on the growing obsession with body shape, especially the glorification of having a “big butt.” And I had to ask myself: Do I actually want a big butt, or do I want a body that simply honors my natural shape?
That question opened the door to something deeper—something historical, something painful.
Most people don’t know the story of Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman from the 1800s whose naturally curvy body was put on display in European freak shows. Her buttocks, a result of a genetic condition called steatopygia, was exoticized and dehumanized. She became a spectacle—not a person. Her story laid the foundation for how Black women’s bodies have been hypersexualized ever since.
And what’s wild is that we’re still living with the aftershocks today.
The BBL—Brazilian Butt Lift—has become a trend. A symbol of desirability. But here’s the part nobody talks about: the contradictions within the trend. It’s a double-edged sword.
Women who are naturally fuller—especially heavier Black women—are often shamed or dehumanized when their curves are perceived as too much or too real. They’re sexualized in public, objectified in silence, and made to feel like they can’t exist without being seen as a sexual commodity.
But then—on the flip side—petite women, like me, are praised for getting BBLs. The same body parts that are shamed on one woman are celebrated on another, so long as it fits a “palatable” frame. That’s not empowerment—that’s performance.
We’ve created a culture where having a big butt is only acceptable if it comes on a small, sculpted frame. If you’re bigger? It’s a threat. It’s “too sexual.” It’s “too much.” You’re told to hide it, shrink it, or apologize for it.
So the truth is: many women don’t feel safe in their own bodies, regardless of size. Whether you’re curvy, thick, or slim, the body becomes something to be managed for someone else’s comfort, someone else’s pleasure.
This is why I believe so many of us are just trying to find peace in a body we’ve never been taught to honor—because what we’re chasing often has nothing to do with us. It’s the conditioning. The history. The gaze. The system.
But what if we stopped running?
What if we let our bodies be, without the pressure to shrink, shape, or sexualize?
What if we realized that the problem was never our bodies—but the systems that told us how to feel about them?
This is the unlearning. This is the healing. And I’m here for every Black woman learning to love her body on her own terms—not for the gaze, not for the trend—but for the truth.
Audio version available here:
In this heartfelt audio reflection, I unpack the complex layers of body image, desirability, and historical conditioning—especially as they
