blackness and beauty in popular culture
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Hobson, Janell
- Publish Year
- 2005
- Shelfmark
- WER 1A 2005
- Thesaurus
- vrouwenlichamen, zwarte vrouwen, witte vrouwen, etniciteit, populaire cultuur
- Description
- Hobson tackles the objective/objecting gaze of White America both past and present. In her book, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, she seeks to reclaim the beauty of the callipygian frame by allowing the full buttocks and breasts of Black women to unapologetically speak for themselves, unhindered by the voyeuristic gaze of the Other. Dr. Hobson not only allows the reader to examine the `blaxploitation' inflicted upon women from science and artistic media, but she demands that we challenge contemporary transgressions. Sara Baartman, of the infamous Hottentot Venus exhibition, was paraded around in front of men who hatefully lusted after her unrefined curves. Is this emotional slavery somehow different from Janet Jackson's pierced breast appearing on the World Wide Web, far beyond her control, to further give White men the ability to gaze and critique the `primitive' African body for which he has no appropriate perspective lens?