Sexual Objectification of
Sara Baartman
Sara Baartman represented something exotic and new; she was displayed not for her beauty, but her strangeness. She had dark skin, large breasts, large buttocks, and an oversized labia. This contrasted greatly with the pale-skinned, petite, and fine-featured European women at the time. Sara Baartman received the nickname, the "Hottentot Venus" as she was exhibited throughout Europe as a "freak show". Hottentot was a term used to describe people of Khoisan decent, but the Europeans twisted the term to mean savage, primal, and subhuman (Sharpley-Whiting, 7). Venus, conversely, referred to the Roman goddess of beauty and love. The Europeans thought Baartman was hypersexual. Therefore they twisted the meaning of this word to the "latter image of prostitution, sexuality, and danger that reproduced itself in narrative and was projected onto black female bodies" (Sharpley-Whiting, 7). Unfortunately, society is no kinder to black females today than they were in the time of Sara Baartman. In fact, the sexual objectification of black women has evolved into the sexual objectification of all women, regardless of color, shape or size. White women, however, are sexually objectified slightly different than women of minority status are. Continue to "Pretty, but..." to learn more.