Dawn of the Booty Supremacists

ONCE UPON a time, women longed to have flat butts. 'Big tits, tiny ass' is how my mother described the body ideal of her youth. How times have changed. I have a forty-two inch posterior and no complaints.

Well, one complaint. Now that we the callipygian have risen to power, I don't want us lording it over the assless. In the pop culture vanguard, the lording has already begun.

At the zany close of "Anaconda," when, in the video, Nicki is giving Drake a quite skillful lapdance, she ad-libs, as only Nicki can, This one is for.../ My bitches with a fat ass in the fuckin club/ I said where my fat ass big bitches in the club/ Fuck them skinny bitches! fuck them skinny bitches in the club!/ I wanna see all the fat ass bitches in the motherfuckin club fuck you if you skinny bitches what! kyuh!

I hate to gripe; Nicki should say whatever she wants. And I could definitely see myself in the club shouting along, Fuck them skinny bitches! Fuck them skinny bitches in the club!--because that sounds fun to shout. It's hilarious and mean. But still. I see we are veering in a troublesome direction.

'Skinny bitches' are also referenced in Meghan Trainor's curve empowerment anthem "All About That Bass." The song is cute, harmless, direly catchy, but I find it odd for a song whose theme is plainly meant to be 'You are BEAUTIFUL!' to mock those poor skinnies. In the video a representative Size 2 girl looks on, befuddled, banished to the fringe while the curvy girls dance and frolic. Trainor sings, Every inch of you is perfect, but this seems to apply to curve-acceptance rather than everything-acceptance.

IN THIS Kardashi-era, it is hardly reasonable to claim, as Trainor does, to be 'bringing booty back.' Pop and rap radio currently serve up about a hundred butt exaltations per hour, staggeringly outpacing references to any other body part. So don't let's pretend we are uplifting the downtrodden here.

Booty supremacy uses the same faulty logic as Barbie-body supremacy, presuming that there can be but one ideal type of beauty. We can get away with it by acting like we are empowering an underrepresented minority (curves still being rare in certain kinds of beauty imagery). But it's not right. We risk becoming the "oh my god Becky" girls, those judgmental meanies who find women with bodies unlike theirs bizarre and gross.

Am I pleased to have my culture come around to idealizing my own body type within my lifespan? You better believe. But we ought not hate upon vanquished 'skinny bitches,' many of whom end up skinny not by any eating-disordered design, but simply by genetic fate. (Shoot: some of them are getting fake butts.) We in the thick community should celebrate our thin sistren. Beauty runs in all sizes, even 2.

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