By Andre E. Johnson
Presented at the National Council of Black Studies
Atlanta, GeorgiaMarch 19, 2009
Abstract: In 1992, Rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot caused a sensation when he released his song and video "Baby Got Back." While the song reached number one on the charts, MTV banned the video because of its perceived raunchiness at the time. Others also denigrated the song and video because of its perceived misogynistic lyrics and objectifying gaze. However, in this paper, I argue that Baby Got Back is a song that not only does it speaks out against “perceived” beauty; it also (re) affirms black female beauty.
Introduction
When Sir Mix-a-Lot released Baby Got back in February of 1992, it became an instant hit. The single shot up the charts and garnered Mix-a-Lot a Grammy nomination in 1993 for best rap solo performance. While the song enjoyed wide airplay and held the number one spot on the now defunct Box Video channel and Billboard’s top spot of rap singles, Mix-a-Lot was not without his critics. Many called it racist and sexist (Birnbaum 8F) and MTV refused to play the video before 9:00pm citing a number of protest from its viewers (Haring 4). However, perhaps its more scathing critiques came from feminist scholars who saw the song as replicating male centered pathologies that reduced women (black women) to just their back sides.
An example of such a critique comes from Janell Hosbson. In her insightful and critical essay, the Batty Politic, she argues that Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back
[F]rames black male sexual desire as more base and raw than white male desire. He declares that he “likes big butts” yet challenges that “even white boys have to shout,” a dichotomous construction in which black men are less inhibited in their sexual expression while white men, who—in stereotypical fashion, because they are too wired, stiff, and mechanical to express their “base” desires—require the raw and hypersexual black female body to enable them to “shout.” (96)
Further, she asserts:
On the one hand, this rap performance could be viewed as subversive in its critique of white beauty standards; on the other hand, it reinforces the binary opposition between whiteness and blackness while reducing black women to one essential body part. Black women are still viewed in the music lyrics and video as inherently "more sexual" than their "envious" and "inhibited" white female counterparts, and black men—through their desire for rear ends—are stereotyped as "more real" and more expressive of their libidos than their white male counterparts (97).
While I am sensitive to and supportive of many critiques and challenges put forth by Hobson throughout her essay, her reading of Baby Got Back is problematic. Though she opens a space for an alternative reading, her essay remains critical of the way Mix-a-Lot presents women. While Hobson’s essay is a critical examination of how society views and treats women, she does not leave a space for how men can help forge alliances and speak out against the same treatment of women that she so successfully analyzes. In other words, where does objectifying end and affirmation begin? How can someone engage in appreciation without condemnation? In this essay, I argue that Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back gives voice that not only affirms black female beauty, but also offers a critique upon that same beauty standards as Hobson and other feminist scholars do.
“Oh My God...Look at her Butt!”
Baby Got Back starts with two “white” women looking at a black woman’s butt to the point of disgust. They notice the size of the butt, “it’s so big, ugh” and she “looks like one of those rap stars girlfriends.” “They” meaning rap stars, “only talk to her because” she “looks like a prostitute.” Her butt is “so big” and “so round” and its “like out there.” Further, after another disgusting “uh,” the butt is “gross” and “so black.”
The beginning of Mix-a-Lot’s song is important because it sets the frame for the rest of the song. These women, portrayed on the video as white, have a problem not with the woman; apparently, they did not know her. They had a problem with her butt size. By noticing the size of the women’s butt, they quickly associate her with hip-hop by declaring that she must be “one of those rap stars girlfriends.” They also associate her with being a prostitute because her butt is “so big, round and black.”
“I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie…”
The first stanza of Mix’s song starts with “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” This functions as an immediate answer to the disgust discussed earlier in the song by the white women. Claiming, “Other brothers…get sprung by big butts,” Mix-a-Lot assures his audience (and women with big backsides) that he is not along with his desire of voluptuous backsides. Mix-a-Lot wants to “get with” these women, because, contrary to the earlier depiction of women with big butts as being prostitutes, she is “not the average groupie.” We should not miss Mix’s subtlety here. Groupies are usually white women associated with white rock bands; not hip hop. By denying her “groupie” status, Mix now can ride her in his “Benz,” be “used by her,” and appreciate her sensual dancing. Further, Mix tires of magazines saying, “Flat butts are the thing,” because if you “take the average black man and ask him that,” he argues, “she gotta pack much back.”
Mix infers two things here. First, he again assures his audience that he is not along in appreciating shapely women by claiming that the average black man would agree with him. However, there is a bigger point Mix makes. The magazines that say, “Flat butts are the thing” cater to an audience that apparently does not include the “average black man.” What Mix does here is to affirm that the average (heterosexual) black male’s appreciation of women is different from main stream society. By claiming this difference, Mix (re) asserts that black men have a choice and its okay that the choice does not fit mediated visions of what is right.
“I Like Them Round and Big…”
The second stanza of the song is a further repudiation of the opening dialogue. Mix declares he likes them (butts) “round and big” and while he draws upon stereotypical images of black men being “animals…begging for a piece of that bubble,” Mix’s larger aim focuses on women—not in Playboy or women seen in rock videos (groupies). The women that Mix appreciates are “real thick and juicy,” not created by silicone, and look more like track diva Flo Jo (Florence Griffith Joyner).
Mix then speaks directly to the “thick soul sistas” who he promises not to cuss or hit.” While he wants to “oooooh” until the break of dawn because “baby got it going on,” he knows that “a lot of Simps won’t like this song.” Simps for Mix are men who do not appreciate black female beauty so all they want to do is to “hit it and quit it,” but he would rather stay and play.” Thus, Mix reshapes the shapely black woman into someone who is desirable and “even white boys have to shout, “Baby got back!”
While others have interpreted Mix as being sexist (which is a fair reading), I suggest that Mix offered a critique on both mainstream society and other men who only want women for one night stands. Feminist and womanist scholars have done an excellent job at bringing our attention to the hypocrisy and the amount of cognitive dissonance that remains in our culture. On the one hand, well-formed black women are not desirable, hideous to look at, and aesthetically unpleasing, while at the same time, used and abuse for the pleasures of sex. However, Mix’s sexual overtures are “straight” to the point and grounded in his affirmation of the pleasingly plump black female body. His declaration that “white boys even have to shout” should not be read as whites giving approval of black female bodies and that it is now fine to affirm hefty backsides—Mix and others were doing that already. The declaration should be read as white men coming to the realization of their own inner desires and that one does not have to conformed to the constructed view (even if one is white) of beauty. In short, white, thin, and flat butt women do not represent for all men aesthetically pleasing female bodies no matter how much the media present them.
“But Please Don’t Lose that Butt”
With the third and final stanza of Baby Got Back, while appreciating black women “playing work out tapes by [Jane] Fonda and doing “side bends and sit-ups,” Mix-a-Lot, enthusiastically proclaims, “but please don’t lose that butt.” Here Mix speaks to the pressure society places on black women to lose weight and conform to the mediated images. However, while working out can be interpreted as a positive, working out to reduce one’s butt size so that one could fit perceived beauty images is interpreted as a negative.
However, not all “brothers” are into voluptuous women because they “play a hard roll” and tell others that the “butt ain’t gold.” Nevertheless, when they “toss it and leave it,” Mix pulls up quick to retrieve it.” Further he says that while Cosmo call “you fat,” he is not down with that.” Then he offers a final repudiation of the archetypical beauty standard when he pronounces to the “bean pole dames in the magazines, you ain’t it Miss Thing. Give me a sista, I can’t resist her, red beans and rice didn’t miss her.” Mix ends his song with another critique of men who dis these women by hitting them. He lets his audience know that when someone does this, he will “pull up quick to get with them.”
Sir Mix-a-Lot, Feminist Theory, and Booty Politics
Feminist scholars have been helpful at reminding us about the images of women portrayed in the media. African American beauty, especially African American women, “has been disparaged” and been the “subject of erasure and been wrought with racist stereotypes” (Patton 26). According to Patton, this has caused many African American women to feel bound by “mediated beauty standards” which can lead to feelings of inferiority (26). Drawing from the work of Jones and Shorter-Gooden, Patton further suggested that this inferiority complex held by African American women who do not fit the stereotypical mediated standard of beauty leads to the Lily Complex—the “altering, disguising, and covering up your physical self in order to assimilate and to be accepted as attractive” (26).
While other scholars suggest that this analysis is too narrow and it does not speak to the many situations that women resist normative standards of beauty, it also does not speak to how men (especially in hip hop) resist and simply reject these stereotypical views as well. According to Miller-Young, by claiming he “like big butts,” Mix-a-Lot celebrated black women’s voluptuous butts as symbols of desirability and beauty. (267).
However, as noted earlier, many took the song to be offensive, sexist and racist. There are two reasons for that initial reaction. First, Mix-a-lot commented on what has been historically a taboo subject — black women butts. Campbell writes that within African American patriarchy, the “black female booty imposes many constraints as they provide opportunities for self-empowerment” (502). Second, along with the commentary on the butt, Mix-a-Lot also provided comment within the context of hip hop—a culture that have been problematic for both feminist and non-feminist scholars.
Hip hop itself is rife with sexist and misogynist lyrics that do denigrate and obejectify black women back sides. Campbell notes that many African American rappers have an “enormous distrust of the booty, seeing it as a lure to manipulate men’s desire for women’s own purposes” (502). Campbell also asserts that pimping or as Neal calls it, “neo-pimping discourse” is also problematic because it has “come to police sexually explicit African American feminity—whether it is for sale or not” (502). In short, by commenting on the butt and doing it within a hip hop context, many read Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back as sexist and misogynistic.
However, there is a need for a re-reading of the song. As noted earlier, while some have already read the song as a cebration of black women and their volumptious backsides and a critical commentary of constructed and mediated images of women, I suggest that it is more than that. Baby Got Back is also a (re) affimation of black female beauty. It is an answer to the “Lily Complex” as discussed earlier and it is a critique on what mediated images consider normal. What Mix-a-Lot said in Baby Got Back is that black women are fine—fine for how they look—fine being who they are—and fine for being sexual beings. By placing this comment within a hip hop context, Mix-a-Lot assured redicule and scorn. However, for many young women who do not fit the ideal mediated image of beauty and who want to feel affirmed by someone of the opposite sex, Mix’s Baby Got Back went a long way at renaming ideal beauty.
In addtion, Mix-a-Lot’s song went further in affirming the tastes and likes of black men as well. If some believe that black women backsides and curveous shapes are abnormal and not desireable, many see (read) black men’s desire for this body type as abnormal. Therefore, what many have intepreted as being wrong or disgusting, is now intepreted as fine and wanting.
However, even if this is affirming as I suggest, there is still risk involved. When does a man’s appreciation of the curveous nature of black women become sexual objectification? Feminist theorists argue that objectification happens when people (men) reduce women to objects instead of individuals with complex personalities. I argue that Mix-a-Lot does not enage in sexual objectification but in sexual desire. The song appreciates what he sees as beautiful and in true hip hop form, he is not afraid to say what is on his mind.
I further maintain that Mix-a-Lot’s song also helps reclaim agency for black women. Mix-a-Lot presents himself in the song as a person who desires the backside of the women but instead of forcing himself on the women, the woman is free to choose if she wants him. By respecting the wishes of black women, he would not “hit them or cuss them,” and when they are diss, he will “pull up quick to retreive them,” he presents himself as the pursuer in a potential relationship and not taking what he wants. In this, the women then can make a decision to return Mix’s advances or not. Mix not only affirmed her beauty, but he also did not reduce her to an object without agency; she remains the subject.
Conclusion
In this paper, I maintained that Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got back should be read as not only a critique of normative mediated beauty standards but also a (re) affirmation of black female beauty. While others have hinted at this reading as well, I suggested that Mix-a-Lot’s reading in a hip hop context will carry further weight for everyday women and men than many of our position papers and articles presented at conferences and workshops. What we have to do as scholars is to be more aware of the intepretive lens that others use in affirmation. Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back did that for a host of women—whom many told was too fat or did not measure up to the mediated image of what beauty was suppose to be.
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