Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

The butt never represents itself. This is how Heather Radke's book Butts: A Backstory begins.

I found out about it from reading 'an interview where the author explains this: "You can’t see your own butt, you are always seeing it through reflection, photography, or other people’s gaze. We don’t have a proper word for our butts, only euphemisms, which is unique to our butts."

She ultimately settles on "butt" as the term she's going to use in her book after discussing other options (buttocks, ass, etc.) and deeming them all inadequate: too vulgar, too childish, too sexual, or something. She also has to make it clear that she's talking about "the cheeks, not the hole."

She says in the interview:

I realized that, unlike breasts, for example, where the biological function is so deeply related to the symbolic meaning (maternity, femininity, etc.), butts really don’t have much inherent biological meaning. And yet their symbolic meaning is so complex and layered. They are deeply tied up with notions of race, femininity, and even hard work (think of the phrases like “work your butt off”). But those associations are ones we have projected onto the butt, and they are always changing."

She writes extensively about Sarah Baartman, an indigenous African woman who was brought to Europe (and given the only name we know her by) by European men who wanted to make money from exhibiting her to European audiences obsessed with big butts and her butt specifically. Radke says

Baartman is a very important figure in women’s studies, African diaspora studies, and the history of science, and so there are a lot of secondary sources about her. I also thought a lot about how to represent her on the page. I wanted to make it clear how difficult her life was, but didn’t want to flatten her story, or participate in another kind of exploitation of her life by making her story seem too salacious.

And I think she did an okay job of it. I think she does good generally in addressing race - later, regarding Miley Cyrus popularizing twerking after appropriating it from Black queers, and Kim Kardashian's rumored butt implants.

I was impressed enough with those topics that I was slightly disappointed that Radke re-visited her white-USian-woman thoughts about buying jeans that fit at the end. Having put in effort to extend her curiosity beyond all the messages that an anti-fat misogynist white-supremacist patriarchy has fed her about her body for the course of the book doesn't leave her immune to their continued influence I suppose, any more than my awareness of the racist sexist ableist history of anti-fatness makes me any more comfortable with the way I look after I've gained weight in the last year or so.

But then, at the end of the interview when asked what other body parts deserve the same treatment, Radke says

Bellies would be great! I do think you could really do a deep-dive on anything and you’d likely uncover a similar set of questions about race, gender, fashion, class, and control. Breasts are sort of the obvious one, but I think I’d be more interested in arm flab, necks (a la Nora Ephron), thighs, or maybe even eyebrows? I’m sure women from different backgrounds and of different ages might have other ideas to offer.

I think any part of the body that carries a whiff of shame would be a fruitful study, because shame often suggests hidden, unexplored feelings and histories. We don’t always know where shame comes from, even though we feel it potently. Exploring that shame doesn’t exactly free you, but I do think it offers a deeper understanding and maybe even a greater sense of control. Realizing that the shame we have about our bodies comes from history and culture — that it is, essentially, a human construction and not a biological one — can offer a bit of freedom even if we still all feel bad when we go into a dressing room and try on pants.