Baartman’s atypical body was showcased as the authentic African type

Evidence

Baartman’s Khoi people of southern Africa had been classified as the lowest Africans, the closest to animals, for more than a century. Baartman’s buttocks and genitals were irregularly large among her fellow Khoi women, not to mention African women across the continent, or across the Atlantic on Jefferson’s plantation. And yet Baartman’s enormous buttocks and genitals were presented as regular and authentically African. She was billed on stage in the fashionable West End of London as the “Hottentot Venus,” which tightened the bolt on the racist stereotype linking Black women to big buttocks. Polygenesist Charles White had already tightened the bolt linking Black men with big genitalia. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 364

Categorization

• CANDY: The fact that Baartman’s features were atypical among Khoi women yet presented as quintessentially African is a startling, shareable detail.