Episode 250: Doin' the Butt with Heather Radke
Kate and Doree discuss some recent prods they’re enjoying. Then, author Heather Radke joins to talk about her book Butts: A Backstory, the cultural significance (and appropriation) of butts, and the freedom of being a horse girl.
Photo Credit: Andrew Semans
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I am Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we are not experts.
Doree: No. But we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: Hello. Welcome. It's 2023, but you can still visit our website Forever35podcast for links to everything we mentioned on the show. You can find us on Instagram @Forever35podcast and you can join the Forever35 Facebook group where the password is serums,
Doree: And you can shop our favorite products shopmy.us/forever35. We do have a newsletter, Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. And you can call or text us at (781) 591-0390, and you can always email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Kate: And hey, you know what? It's a new year. I'm going to put a request out if you like the show, go ahead and leave us a positive review on Apple Podcast or tell a friend or mention us on social media, those things.
Doree: I love that Kate,
Kate: Help this podcast. Find an audience. And believe it or not, we still like to find an audience.
Doree: We do. We do still like to find an audience. So you know what people talk about. Well, if you haven't written a book, you might not know this, but people talk about hand selling books. If you go into a bookstore and you talk to the person who works there and you're like, I'm looking for a mystery about a woman in a small town. You know what I mean? You describe what you're looking for and then the book seller is like, oh, you want blah, blah, blah.
Kate: Yes. I love that feeling.
Doree: That's hand selling.
Kate: Okay. Yes.
Doree: Yeah. So I feel like sometimes I will hand sell, and I know you do this too. Don't you feel like you hand sell the podcast?
Kate: Yes, I do. And it's strange too sometimes because I'm like, it's about self-care, but it's not. And it's about skincare, but it's not. It's also about all these other things and you're going to learn a lot about us.
Doree: Oh yeah. So if you're listening and you wanna start hand selling our podcast, please do.
Kate: We appreciate that.
Doree: We would really appreciate that.
Kate: I also just wanna note that we are going to be celebrating our five year anniversary of this podcast, and we'll be sharing listener thoughts, memories, feedback about the show on an upcoming episode. So if you have something you would like to share about a moment, about a thing we said about an absurd conversation that kept going for months and months, we would love to hear from you. You can text us, leave us a voicemail, send us a voice memo, email us at any of the places we mentioned earlier, and we will be sharing those at an upcoming episode.
Doree: And if the podcast has changed your life, we wanna hear that too.
Kate: Yeah. Did we somehow introduce you to your spouse
Doree: I Mean or like, did we, or one of our Facebook groups help you get a new job or anything like that? We wanna hear about it. If we've ruined your lives. I don't mean we probably don't wanna hear that. Sorry.
Kate: Oh, we don't. I mean that might be good feedback. Don't hesitate to gently let us know. Hopefully we haven't. Hopefully we've just been hearing in your earbuds. Hopefully we tootle ooting along for the last five years.
Doree: Oh my gosh.
Kate: Just toot tootooling along. What it never ends Dory. I feel like it never ends my escapades into skincare. And I've been trying new products and it just, it's never going to stop. And I'm trying fancy products I was sent and I have feelings about it.
Doree: Okay, Kate, look at you.
Kate: We had a really interesting conversation in late 2022 with former beauty editor, Valerie Monroe. And one, she's in her seventies. Two, she really feels strongly that drugstore beauty products are like that. Basically beauty is marketing. So that really stuck with me and I've been making a concerted effort to just kind of streamline and also consciously consider when I'm being taken for a ride, in terms of capitalism and marketing and the role that I'm playing in it when it comes to my beauty products. But I will also share that I am a flawed human and I was sent some fancy beauty products and I've been using them and I think it's an important caveat to note that I was gifted these items because I wouldn't mean spend this much money on them. And so I'm having this kind of weird complex relationship to these items because they're very much enjoying it, but I'm not going to be able to buy them again. But I will say, the prods are nice, but are the prods nice? Because I think they're nice because of the price tag. Do, this is the game that capitalism plays with me.
Doree: Go on.
Kate: But look, if you're just here for product reviews, here's the deal. I'm trying out Sulwhasoo's products. They sent me four items, they're a Korean skincare line I believe they've been around for a long time. They're kind of a well-known luxury skincare line. And I've been using their gentle cleansing oil, their first care activating serum, which is essentially the first step serum that's hydrating and also allegedly is the platform upon which the rest of your products are built. This serum juices your skin up to be ready for everybody else. Then I'm using their concentrated ginseng renewing serum, and then they're concentrated ginseng renewing cream. Everything about it is lovely. I love how it all feels. I love how it smells. I haven't been using anything else just to, when I'm gifted products, I like to try to just them and see without bringing in my other skincare friends and I don't know these Sulwhasoo products, they're pretty nice. My skin has a Dewey Glow vibe to it.
Doree: Okay. I was going to ask, you've been raving about these, but what is it that there is you feel?
Kate: Here's what I'm liking. Okay. And then I will say I did throw one other product into the mix. An old friend, the A 313 vitamin A retinol cream from France, the French Pharmacy stuff that I've talked about before.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: My skin has been getting really dry from tret and from Retinol, just really dry. And so I haven't been using any sort of retinol product, but then I was like, maybe I should throw one thing into the mix. Why not this old baby that's been sitting in my drawer? So I did put that on one night. Otherwise I've just been using this Sulwhasoo stuff I feel, and I could be not seeing things correctly. I feel like my skin has a nice kind of dewy glow from these products.
Doree: I mean do look glowy, but I'm also looking at you through a computer screen.
Kate: That's right. I also will say a Dewey Glow does nothing for the world or for me. There's nothing, nothing. Do you know what I mean? Okay. That's the result. What impact does that have on anybody or anything? Nothing. But I like it.
Doree: Okay. I mean, that's fine. You don't have to tie yourself in knots justifying your like of these products, Kate.
Kate: I know, but I do feel like I can't now shake the constant self-reflection and critique. Anytime I use anything or do anything, I feel like I'm a little bit like catch-22ed myself.
Doree: Right. Well, I think that all of these systems are worth interrogating and I think we do interrogate them and sometimes it's okay to just shut that off a little bit or turn the volume down.
Kate: All right, well I'll turn it down as I use this stuff and then I will bid farewell to it with a tear or two and get back to my regular products.
Doree: Okay. All right. Well thank you for those reviews Kate. I am just using the same prods that I've been using before, but I did want to report that I think I am going to rebuy a prod that was gifted to me. Would you like to guess what it is?
Kate: I'm trying to guess, off the top of my, I'm trying to guess. I'm sitting here and I'm like, what is it something? She got something. She likes it. Is it a skincare product?
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Okay. It's a skincare product. face wash. I don't really know what you've been washing your face with lately. I'm assuming you're still using your CoQ10, you're still using a retinol. Is it a toner. stop? Is it, am I on the right path? It's a toner.
Doree: You're on the right path.
Kate: Oh my God. Okay. It's a toner, but it's not a spray toner. It's a toner. You dab on your skin. I'm right then. I'm right also. Wow, okay. I don't know.
Doree: All Right. Okay.
Kate: You gotta tell me.
Doree: I'll tell you. It is the Klog Hydro-Shield Anti-pollution jelly toner.
Kate: Wow. Wait a second. Have you used this all up?
Doree: It's almost gone
Kate: Stop.
Doree: It is almost gone. Yeah. And I am going to rebuy it.
Kate: Wow. Okay. What is it about this product that you like? This is big for you.
Doree: This is big for me. I like that. I like how easy it is to put on.
Kate: Okay, so describe it.
Doree: Just kind of glides it. Glides right on. It's a like a gel, but it's not sticky or tacky. Your skin absorbs it really nicely. I feel like it's a good base for putting other products on. I'm just, this is the, I'm really into it.
Kate: This is the Hydro-Shield anti-pollution jelly Toner,
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Okay. Just confirming, because I have this in my medicine cabinet and I may be able to circle back.
Doree: It costs $9 and 80 cents. You can, it's SoCo Glams like in-house line, the Klog that is with a K. And yeah, I think it's great. So if you like me, have been historically toner skeptical, I would say give this one a try. It's not expensive. And yeah, I think it's great. The other thing that I have been using that I also really like is the sunscreen from Hero Cosmetics.
Kate: I know nothing of this. Who are they? Okay. Who's heroes? Who's Hero Cosmetics
Doree: Hero are known, are best known for their pimple patches. But they also make a really good sunscreen called the Super Light Sunscreen SPF 30. And they promote it as a sunscreen for acne prone skin. I think anyone can use it. I really like it, probably because it is made for acne prone skin. It's very light again, goes on really nicely and I feel like it stays on really well. I usually, I wear it when I play tennis
Kate: Oh
Doree: I feel like it does stay on. And today I used a different sunscreen. I used one of my old favorites, the Biore Watery essence. And I feel like it didn't work as well. So I'm going back to Hero. This is
Kate: Also interesting cuz you were on a big hunt for a sunscreen, you could sweat in. So is this kind of one you'd recommend?
Doree: I think this is one I would recommend. It's also, it's a mineral sunscreen I should mention also.
Kate: Oh, that's a twist.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: I wasn't expecting that.
Doree: It's a twist. Right. So yeah, I really recommend this.
Kate: Okay. And that you can get it Target. I see here
Doree: You can get it at Target. That's right. There's also a Hero Cosmetics website, excuse me, that you can order it from.
Kate: Well look at this Coming in hot with new prods in 2023.
Doree: And our guests today has pretty much nothing to do with prods.
Kate: No. But our guest today has everything to do with this pod.
Doree: Yes. And the means of prod production.
Kate: We're working really hard to get done. Oh no, I'm going to let you have it.
Doree: Okay, thank you.
Kate: So we are talking today with Heather Radke and many of you have sent us a link to Heather's new book, her first book, which is called Butts: A Backstory. It was released in November. And let us tell you a little bit about Heather. She is a contributing editor and reporter at Radiolab, which we all know we love Radiolab. It's the Peabody Award-winning podcast from WNYC. She also writes essays, criticism, and reported pieces for the Paris Review Daily, the Believer Gua topic, long reads, the White Review and others. She has an MFA in non-fiction from Columbia University where she also teaches creative writing. And she founded the Incarcerated Writer Initiative at Columbia and continues to serve as an advisor there. And in case you haven't gathered from the name of her book, which if you give it a Google, you will see the cover is just a giant peach emoji. Her book is essentially an incredible kind of history and backstory about the cultural significance of the butt. And it's an excellent read.
Doree: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Kate: So we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we will be sharing our incredibly interesting conversation with Heather, all about butts.
Heather, welcome to Forever35. It's great to have you here because in the course of the five years of the show, we've had a lot of conversations about butts. So many so that people have sent us links to your book, including I think a friend of yours who was
Heather: Oh
Kate: Yeah. They were like, you've gotta have Heather on to talk about her book. So we're very, very excited to have you on the show because you have written a book literally called Butts: a Backstory. That's fantastic. But before we talk all about our butts and the history of butts and all the issues that come along with them we like to kick off every interview asking our guests about a self-care practice that is meaningful in their own lives. So is there one that you might be able to share with us that you are currently practicing, no matter how big or small?
Heather: Well first of all, thanks so much for having me. I should have maybe anticipated this question. I, I'm in a sort of funny moment in my life cuz I have a five and a half month old. And the idea of a self-care practice
Kate: It's hilarious.
Heather: I drank a glass of water earlier today and I, I've been thinking a lot about the need to stretch because I am, the thing about having a baby, as you guys know, is that they get slowly bigger and all of a sudden I'm like, get these weird pains cuz I'm calling around 16 pounds instead of eight pounds in a weird way. And last night I successfully did three stretches before I went to bed. And I was very pleased with that self-care practice.
Doree: I love that. As someone who's three and a half year old is still in a crib and the other day, i was like
Kate: The lifting,
Doree: Oh, this is getting a little challenging, lifting him in and out. So I really appreciate that. And also as someone whose bones are getting older, and creaky-er that is something that I need to incorporate into my day-to-day life that I just don't, i just dont do it.
Heather: Yea but, do you ever think about this, how they've been telling us to lift weights for all these years for our bones, but then it's like you get a kid and you're like, oh, I'm doing it. I did the weightlifting.
Doree: This is very true. This is very true. And my son, I mean, I don't know exactly how much he weighs right now, but it's gotta be close to 40 pounds. So I mean I could just bench press him.
Kate: Just put him over your head.
Heather: Just do some squats with him.
Doree: Yeah. Well I do remember, oh gosh, I know, I don't wanna get us on too much of a tangent, but I do remember those days of the early baby days when they went nap and you're like, you're literally bouncing them up and down and doing the squats.
Heather: That bouncy ball, I can see it from here.
Doree: The bouncy ball. Oh, The bouncy ball.
Heather: I'd love to know what day is the day on that bouncy ball anyway.
Doree: Right.
Well, its interesting, I was going to say, I do think the physical toll of parenting is not disgusted whether or not you give birth vaginally or if you come into parenting through foster or adoption, however you come into parenting a child, it's physically grueling. And many of us are jobs are sedentary, so all of a sudden we're doing this actual really challenging physical labor on no sleep. And it really takes a toll on our bodies, especially for some of us middle-aged bodies.
Heather: Totally. I mean seriously the yoga ball, if there's one piece of parenting advice I would have for people, it's do some practice rounds on that yoga ball. Get your back real strong.
Kate: Yeah, I feel that deeply. And I also like what you said about just doing a few stretches because I've been trying to do yoga every day in the last month for the similar reason of just body aches and pains. And I often get ahead of myself of if I don't do it for this long, it doesn't count. But I think there's such, it truly only takes one or two minutes of doing something to make our bodies feel infinitely better. And so I appreciate that reminder.
Heather: Yeah, I mean I've only done it one day, so maybe let's not get too ahead of ourselves.
Kate: No, we're giving it to you. It's a practice now. You did it once. It counts Heather. So I wanted to just start, and Doree, I hope it's okay with you to kick off with a quote from your book because I just feel like you really summed up so much in just this one line which you wrote on page two of butts. Women's butts have been used as a means to create and reinforce racial hierarchies as a barometer for the virtues of hard work and as a measure of sexual desire and availability. And you also say that the size of a woman's butt has long been perceived and excuse me, has long been a perceived indicator of her very nature, her morality, her femininity, and even her humanity. And that just hit me immediately upon opening your book. So I would love to start there and kind of ask how this curiosity or interest began in researching butts because they are so much more than just a body part.
Heather: Yeah, so I mean think the kind of primordial moments of this project were when I was a teenager or maybe even before that I, so I have a big-ish butt, and my mom has a big-ish butt, and when I was in high school I started to feel like a little bit of shame about it because it was the nineties, the early nineties, well no, it was the mid nineties, let's be accurate. I grew up in a pretty white suburb of Lansing, Michigan. And the kind of ideal body in that place at that time was kind of like Kate Moss body. And I got pretty low level teased about my big butt when I was in high school. And it just became the part of my body that I started to feel shame about and what I call mundane shame, which is I think a kind of shame we all can carry about our bodies. Something you notice about yourself that bugs you, but maybe actually most people wouldn't even think too much about. And then over the next 20 years, the ideal body shape actually changed. And the kind of body I had became more in style, for lack of a better word. And I got, as a writer, I got kind of interested in that idea of how a body type comes in and outta fashion because it seems really bizarre. And then also just, I started to interview a lot of different women, including my mom. And I realized that what butts mean to different people, their people's own relationships with their butts is so vastly different. And that this part of our body carries just a tremendous amount of symbolic meaning. And I mean maybe that's relatively obvious, but when I really started to have, I did a bunch of oral histories for this book in the early stages of research, I started to realize lots of people have lots of different ideas about what an ideal butt is and what their own butt kind of represents. And I wanted to explore the kind of different symbolism inherent in this body part.
Doree: Well there's a lot of symbolism. Could we, without, I'm not asking you to summarize your entire book, but you do a very comprehensive overview of the history of, I guess a lot of how white people have viewed butts and if you could just start with maybe Sarah Bartman and telling us how she has set the tone for the ways that people think about especially black women's butts.
Heather: So Sarah Barman was a woman who was brought up from South Africa. She was an indigenous South African woman. She was brought up from South Africa by two men in the early 19th century to London where they displayed her as part of a freak show because she had a big butt. And it was a way of, the stereotype already existed, but they were really sort of reinforcing and I don't know, kind of publicizing essentially a stereotype of African women from this particular tribe as big butted as hypersexual. And there were several other parts of the stereotype including that they smoke pipes, that's like another part. So they displayed her on stage in a pretty cruel and what sort of horrifying performance. And eventually there was a very famous trial, which is one of the reasons we know quite a bit about Sarah Bartman, about whether the question of the trial was whether or not she was enslaved or free because at that time slavery had just kind of become illegal in the United Kingdom England. And then they decided that she was free and then she went to different parts of England and eventually ended up in Paris where she died. And when she died, her body was dissected by a very famous French scientist named George Coyier who used that autopsy as part of, he was part of this kind of so-called racial science of the 19th century where he was trying to prove that black people, African people were not fully human and European people of European descent were more human than African people. So he used this autopsy report as supposed proof of that. And he also, it's that autopsy report is cited throughout the 19th and 20th century as evidence of, one specific meaning of big butts, which is that big butts are mean that a woman is hypersexual and it's very often that the big butted woman in question is a black woman. So it created the stereotype of the big butted hypersexual woman or really didn't create it, but in some sense codified it. He wrote it down and it became this document that people cited. And then Sarah Bartman actually displayed her body in his museum in Paris and it stayed on display in a variety of museums in Paris until the 1980s. So although that history can seem very old, it really stays with us both through these stereotypes that definitely are still with us today. And also just within my lifetime, you could go see Sarah Bartman's remains in a museum in Paris.
Kate: Ugh.
Heather: Yeah, it's a very, I a very grim story, but I think
Kate: It is,
Heather: I, and it's one, lots of people know this story. I certainly didn't uncover it or anything, but I think it's, when we're think about butts, there's, I think the first thing I've been saying butts to people for five years and emails and phone calls and stuff. And it's funny of course like butts are funny, but they also carry a tremendous amount of racial meaning, gender meaning, and can be pretty deadly serious in a lot of ways too.
Kate: Yeah. You talk about that and you do set up this conversation of we have no real good word for this body part. And it's interesting because that does almost create this disconnect of the actual serious ways in which, butt culture butt obsession has played out over the last hundreds of years, especially in racial appropriation and ways and misogyny means so many different ways. So it's kind of interesting. I almost am curious, do you think that's on purpose?
Heather: Which part? That we don't have a right, correct word.
Kate: Yeah. Is there a little bit of that if we aren't able to discuss it seriously, does that prevent us from having these deeper conversations, which obviously you're nurturing and encouraging.
Heather: Yeah, totally. I mean I don't think it's on purpose, it's conscious, but I think it's much more interesting that it's unconscious. I think it tells us something that we don't have a proper name for it. Even breasts, we call them breasts. If you go to the doctor, you get a breast exam. But we don't, I talked to a few different doctors about this cuz I was like, well you're whatever, a colorectal surgeon, what do you call it? And they all have cutesy names for it too because nobody has this kind of correct term. Now some people will get after me and be like, no, it's buttocks. But when was the last time anybody said buttocks?
Doree: Totally
Heather: Anybody, maybe exercise teacher would say it or something. But at least I would feel pretty funny saying that to, Hey, do my buttocks look big in these pants? No, that's very weird thing to say, at least to me. Do you guys have a word that you use?
Doree: Well, I was just thinking about it because one of the big things I think in raising kids right now is teaching them the correct words for vagina and vulva and penis. And if someone, it's a big thing, if combating sexual abuse, if someone tries to give your vulva a special name, that's a warning sign. All this stuff, whatever, we don't have to get into it, but there's no real word for the butt. So it's like, yeah, okay, we're just going to call it the butt because that's like, that's what it is. So I was just kind of thinking about that when I was reading and when you were writing about all the different doctors you talk to and how some of them just called it the rear, and your bottom. And I was like, oh that is. So I never really thought about that, but I don't know, funny to think about. But yes, we just call it. But I mean my son is still kind of figuring all this stuff out and even though I have told him the accurate anatomical words, he will still often say things refer to the whole region as his butt or there's just a lot of,
Heather: Sure.
Doree: The butt can mean many things. He wants to ask me why I was putting a tampon in my butt.
Kate: My kids called, my kids called the vaginal area front butts for a hot second because they do look like front butts.
Doree: Front butts, yeah.
Heather: I mean, yeah, I get that.
Kate: Yeah. But Heather, can we talk a little bit about what kind of research went into this? Cuz Doree mentioned you have interviews with doctor. I mean you talked to so many people and I know you've been working on this for a while, but what were the different ways in which you got into this topic?
Heather: Yeah, early on in the research I wanted to talk to, like I said, different people. The book is, it's not about all butts, first of all, it's about women's butts or women identified butts I guess I would say too. So I talk to people identify as women and non-binary people about their butts from different age groups, different racial backgrounds, different geographical backgrounds. Although the book is mainly about the US and Western Europe. Cause early on I really realized that this is actually, some people are like, how could you write a whole book about it? It's like you could write 12 books about it. There's so much you else you could say. So I had this thing where I really wanted to be called A backstory and not The Backstory because I really wanted to just be clear that this was only one way you could tell this story. So those oral histories were kind of foundational research to help me figure out different directions the book could go in. And then I used all kinds of different research methods. I did kind of Ray Portage interviews with where I would go and actually report on stuff. And this was before the pandemic. So I went and did this. I went and saw this race in Arizona where humans run against horses, which is a way to explore the use of the muscles of the butt. Or I went to France and went to CO's museum to see where Sarah Bartman's remains had been displayed. Then I also did interviews with all kinds of different people like Greg Smithy who invented Buns of Steel and these two guys who run a place called Planet Pepper where they make butt pads for drag queens. But then I also went and visited them at their, at their studio where they make those butt pads and saw how they got made. So I did kind of reporter things and then I also did a lot of historical research where I looked in archives and I found, I talked to many archivists and talked to lots and lots of historians and cultural studies scholars and read a ton of books and just used every possible mode of research I could think of to approach the topic from as many angles as I could. And then I also include some of my own story in there too. So there's a thread of memoir as well.
Kate: Okay. Well let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right, we are back.
Doree: I was hoping we could talk a little bit about cultural appropriation which we touched on a little bit with the Sarah Barton discussion. But later in the book, I think in the chapter on J.Lo you talk about appropriate white people's appropriation of black culture specifically as it relates to butts. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that. I mean, you mentioned a couple of examples J.Lo being an interesting example because she's Latina and so not white, not black, able to straddle these cultures, I guess, no pun intended, I dunno. And then Kim Kardashian, who also likewise is white, but is half Armenian and getting into all the sort of complications with her own racial identity anyway. Yeah. So could you talk a little bit about that and how appropriation has been sort of a through line when it comes to butts?
Heather: Yeah, for sure. So it was definitely, obviously from the very beginning I was super interested in the question of the way that the butt had become this very racialized part of our bodies. And as a white woman, I also was really interested in the question of the way white women have appropriated essentially the stereotype of black women's bodies. And one of the very first pieces of research I did was actually about the bustle, which is, if you're not familiar, it's the 19th century undergarment that basically makes your butt look huge. And there was this kind of historical rumor I saw in a couple different places that suggested that the bustle was kind of it, maybe it wasn't, but that something was going on with a bustle as a kind of appropriation of Sarah Bartman's body. Because when you see Sarah Bartman, there was these famous cartoons of her and silhouette, and then you see an image of a woman in a bustle at the end of the 19th century. There's a real visual echo between those two images. And so I started to look into this question of was the bustle in a sense a mode of cultural appropriation in the 19th century? And it's a complicated question, it's kind of an unanswerable question in some ways, but it seems to me that there clearly was some kind of relationship and that the way bustle kind of functioned, which was this, it's like you could literally put it on and take it off. That actually became kind of an important metaphor for how I understood cultural appropriation of black bodies and the way specifically white women, cultural appropriate black women's bodies. It became an important way for me to think about it throughout the books because I think this gesture of I'll take it when I want it and get rid of it when I don't, is something you just see again and again in appropriation. And I think it really speaks to the deeply problematic nature of it. What cultural critic, Greg Tate, he wrote a book called Everything But the Burden. And it's really, we sort of see that in the bustle, but then you see it again. I mean, I think that maybe the most potent example of it is Miley Cyrus in 2013 at the VMAs where she goes on stage and she twerks and she actually goes on tour and has a fake butt that she's shimming around and on tour with. And then months, not even a year later, she's changed her image entirely and is no longer interested in what she was getting from appropriating this form of black femininity. And it's all of a sudden it's like Joan Baez, Laurel Canyon lady, and I think in the Miley Cyrus story, we sort of see what white women get from culturally appropriating this stereotype, which is that she was, Miley Cyrus was coming up out of this Hannah Montana time in her life where she was seen as young and innocent and all of a sudden she's 20 years old and she wants to show the world that she's a sexy young lady who's more than just Hannah Montana. And so she uses the stereotype to, and she uses twerk as a way to do that, and then she discards it when it no longer is necessary for her. So that's the same thing we see over and over again. Now, JLo and Kim Kardashian, I think mean Kim Kardashian is actually quite similar. She's very savvy about her use of black femininity and essentially stereotypes of black women's bodies. And she was also obviously very savvy in her use of social media. But the JLo moment is a really interesting one because I mean, I think it's easy to think that this wave of mainstream acceptance of big butts or interest in big butts happens at the end of the two thousands with Kim Kardashian. But actually it's not even me historians who write about the stuff they call JLo the crossover. But because mm-hmm in 1997 there's this kind of amazing moment where if you read a bunch of entertainment and people magazines and 17 and any kind of fashiony tabulating magazines before 1997, it's, they can't even say the word butt. They say dare air. And they give you all this advice about how to make your butt smaller and then all of a sudden JLo's in out of sight. And it's like all of these interviewers, they just can't ask her these kind of totally muddy questions. So what's up with your butt? They're just sort of like, oh my god, women have butts. And then the discourse really starts to change about what constitutes a good butt. So there's this kind of important moment in the late nineties where the main mainstream beauty ideals really start to shift. And this it's, it is a kind of appropriation I think, but slightly it works a little differently because yeah, it's a little bit more about the rise of hip hop and the hip hop music video as a form, which was a very popular by the early two thousands. A lot of music scholars say that hiphop becomes the dominant kinda music in the US and one of the main demographics for hiphop records, if not possibly the biggest demographic who was consuming hiphop in the nineties was white men. So the kind of idea of what is attractive and what an attractive body was started to be gleaned from hip hop music videos as much as anyplace else.
Doree: You just reminded me or made me think of two things. One is that I had forgotten that in the early aughts I pitched an essay about the rise of the butt based on J Lo and no one wanted it. So
Heather: You were right. You were right.
Doree: I was right. I feel very vindicated as a white woman with no butt. I felt alienated from the cultural moment, which who cares? But I remember feeling like, oh butts, okay. The second thing that I'm thinking about is, like you said, Miley and these other white women, they can choose to participate when they want to and when the fad changes or it no longer serves them, they can take out the butt pads, they can just move on. And for people for whom this is their actual body, they cannot do not have that privilege of doing that. So I think it kind of once again highlights the ways in which white people like to dip in and out of black culture and other cultures when it serves them and fly away like when it doesn't. Yeah,
Heather: Yeah, totally. I mean, I even think it's a way that you can, it's an ultimate perform. It's reinforces your whiteness actually, because
Doree: Totally.
Heather: You know, see this even in I, in the way that people talk about music with Elvis, for example, so people who know way more about Elvis than I do, they talk about how he's showing just how white he is by putting himself in juxtaposition with black music and black bodies and sort of saying, look, I can do all this stuff and no one even, they let me. There's a kind of way that yes, you're even more white, you're sort of showing just how white you are by through these acts of appropriation, both the sort of putting on and the taking off.
Kate: Can we talk a little bit about that in the context of body image and diet culture and how butts are connected there? I mean, you write about aerobics, which was so fascinating, and I think Doree and I as both a, as Gen X women, we have seen this, you talk about Kate Moss and then the shift into the, what is the quote, hot body now. And just noticing that right now, and you mentioned this, Kim Kardashian has rumored to take out her Brazilian butt lift and there's this whole kind of celebrities are all using ozempic and everybody's thin is now in, I mean, this is not what I believe, I'm just repeating terrible headlines, but what is the connection here between butts, diet, culture, beauty culture, even in and fashion culture too, which is another thing you talk about.
Heather: Yeah, I mean, well there's so much there. I know the thin is in thing is the thing I get asked about a lot. And it's interesting because I think it actually just shows us how are, well it's not arbitrary that it's more like how any of these discussions about a body being in fashion, it's a mode of control that's conscious and unconscious that's being exerted on us by the fashion industry, the garment industry, social media, all the stuff we know. And that's a relatively obvious thing to say, but it's worth saying because I think one of the things I ended up seeing over and over again was just that how many different modes of control there are over our bodies and just how long that history is. I think one, there's this kind of idea that I think a lot of people have about the twenties, for example, that the flappers take off their corsets and they're so free. But there's a fashion historian, Valerie Steel, who talks about how actually what happens in the twenties is bathroom scales are invented, diet fad diets come in for the first time plastic surgery is invented and Valerie Steel talks about how it's the corset is going from outside of your body to inside of your body. You actually have to become the corset.
Kate: Ooh.
Heather: Because in some ways, I mean the corset
Doree: Yikes,
Heather: I mean I don't wish a corset on anybody, but in a way it's easier than police having the fuco state in your mind, policing yourself about every morsel of food that comes into your body. And then we see this throughout the next hundred years. I think to me, I think it's pretty clear that in the twenties, this idea of what they called then the rectangle woman comes in and more or less doesn't go out of style mean even though there's these moments in the 2010s where you can have a big butt, but it has to be a big butt on a skinny body. You can only have a certain kind of, it's, it's not like we're free or something.
Kate: Right.
Heather: And as much as I'm so glad and supportive that there's like, there's been an interest in body positivity and over the last 15 years in a way that there certainly had never been before. Of course thin is back in, first of all never went out, but it's just how it has to work so deeply baked into the fashion industry. But then I think it's important to say that, like you said, I did all this research on aerobics and it was so fun in a lot of ways. And I met these women who were part of this kind of response to the aerobics movement in the eighties. They were fat fitness kind of activists in the Bay Area and they started aerobics classes for self-identified fat women. And it was a way for them to find freedom in movement. I think as one of them said to me, you don't have to move your body, but you have a right to. And they found ways to, they found liberation in a place where a lot of people had found a lot of constraint. And I think that that's important to talk about too, because it's easy when we talk about bodies and body image and I body I or beauty ideals to be like, it's just this litany of horrors where nothing ever we, there's no way out. But it's also cool to find people who have found little ways out and have found ways to liberation even inside of these kind of structures of control.
Kate: I love that. That makes me feel hopeful as opposed to the kind of constant feeling I always have of just like, there's no way out of this nightmare like so sometimes it just feels so bleak.
Heather: Yeah, I mean think it definitely feels kind of bleak to me sometimes too, but I think it was an important thing to me in the reporting was to find a few different people who have found ways to have experiences in their bodies that aren't so bleak. I think I, it's important to talk to people like that.
Kate: And I think you titled that chapter Joy, is that right? Am I remembering correctly?
Heather: I think so. I think so.
Kate: Yeah. Listen, no pressure. We can go back and find out. But I, I just remember and when I was reading it, I looked back and I was like, oh Joy, this is another thing that we have the right to feel in our bodies. And that small word felt very moving.
Heather: And also I found out this, I had never thought about this before, but I talked to this aerobics historian who told me about how when aerobics started, there's lots of problems with aerobics from the beginning, but at that time women really hadn't been encouraged or allowed to exercise. It was seen as super masculine. It was seen as kind of suspect gender and sexuality suspect if you were into exercise in any way. Mostly women controlled their weight through diet. And so there was actually this kind of real liberation that I think is important to think about when you think about the beginning of aerobics where it's all of a sudden there's this form for middle class femme kind of conservative women to move their bodies around. And that must have as much as it must have felt all kinds of other ways, it must have also felt kind of awesome that they could dance in their little mat thing with jazzersize instructors. And that there was probably something about that that felt good even as it also was another mode of telling women how their body should look.
Kate: Heather, I wanna just shift gears a little bit, although I do actually think this is connected. I went back and read your Horse Girl piece that you wrote a few years ago. I am a horse girl currently just reconnecting with my horse woman side of things. And I was really moved by a lot of what you wrote because I hadn't really considered my relationship, my personal relationship to horses in this way. But you're really exploring why, what is it that draws girls specifically to riding horses? And I wanted to note that I just loved your piece, but also just to get your perspective as a former Saddle Club book series reader yourself where do you stand as a horse girl?
Heather: Oh man.
Kate: How have, and I know, and this could be a whole other podcast I realize, but if you have one kind of thought horse girl thought, I would love to hear it.
Heather: I mean No, I love that you read that cuz actually it totally does relate to what we were just talking about. I think mean what was going on for me and what felt really, when I started to research what other people think about horse girls, I feel like there's a kind of real embodied liberation in riding a horse when you're at an age that, so I was probably what, 10, 11, 12, just before puberty really hits hard. Although I started my period when I was 10, so I guess it hit but that there's a way your body is getting constricted or that there, you're starting to feel all these messages from the outside world that your body needs to look a certain way and behave a certain way. And then when you're riding a horse, there's just this real freedom feeling, or at least there was for me. And I think that there's a way that it felt like both gender allowed that horses are a realm of for girls and also kind of gender bendy a little bit. Cuz it also felt really a kind of bodily liberation that I think at the time felt it had markers of what I understood was allowed for boys, but maybe not totally allowed for girls. And I think the other thing is there's that moment, that's that moment in our lives, or at least it was for me, of a little bit of loss of innocence where your body goes from being this thing that's just to do work to run and jump and ride your bike and then to turning into this thing that's will eventually become sexualized and told how to be correct. But then this is, I think for me that was this moment of middle ness where I could, I was feeling the way that it was going to go, but it was kind of this last gasp of what else can this little girl body do and how can it feel free?
Kate: Well, I loved it. We'll include a link to that as well.
Heather: Oh yeah. So it's, I don't have any horses in my life, but I have thought about getting back into it a little bit in the post pandemic because I can see how actually this point in my life when I care, I just sort of don't care about any of that stuff anymore. I'm like, yeah, get the horses back in here.
Kate: That's, that is exactly where I'm at. So anytime you wanna talk about it, I will encourage you to, literally get back on the horse. Well Heather, it's been so much fun to talk to you. Thank you for coming on and talking to us about All About Butts. Your book, Butts: A Backstory is available now. Wherever anybody wants to buy books, support your local independent book sellers. Please. Is there anything else that you wanna share in terms of where listeners can find you and find your work?
Heather: No, I mean I, I read The Horse Girl piece it, it's one of my faves and yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was so fun,
Kate: Doree. I, I'm so glad listeners put this book on our radar.
Doree: Yes,
Kate: It, it's such an interesting read and I realize we didn't ask Heather at all how she takes care of her butt and that was maybe a missed opportunity.
Doree: Oh my gosh.
Kate: But that's okay. I'm more interested in considering the butt on this kind of culturally significant level than just worrying about, butt acne today.
Doree: Yeah, you're right though. We should have asked,
Kate: We should have, we can send a follow up question.
Doree: I really enjoyed talking to Heather, her book, her book tied together a lot of butt threads, if you will.
Kate: And I appreciate even now, one of the things we talk about with her that is coming up for me right now is how still silly it feels to say the word butt and how there's still no good serious way to talk about butts. Even now, every time I say butt, it makes me wanna laugh. It's just such a strange, weird, figure of speech. I don't know, I think her book is such a great read. If you haven't picked it up, definitely go take it off from the library or give it a bye. It's so good. Oh boy. Moving on from Butts for now. Doree let's check in with our intentions as we get into this new year.
Doree: Okay. lets Do it. Talk to me about where you are at right now vis-a-vis the new year.
Kate: Alright, so New Year, new intention. However, my intention for this week is to not get sucked into the new year, new me bullshit narrative that is everywhere. Two things really caused me to spiral around this time of year. One is the year end wrap-ups, the shared wrap-ups of look what I did, look what I read or this was the year even the videos of very quick interstitial clips of adventures those caused me to have a bit of, it's not fomo but it's fear of not being good enough Fo N G, fungo. Anyway, so I have that, so I'm trying to avoid that. And then the other thing is just the constant relentless marketing of just New Year New You. that can mean anything. It's buy all these new things or change your body or change your habits or all this stuff. And I just am like, Nope, nope, January is just another month. It's just a month that follows December. I am not going because that's just for me. I know this isn't the case for everybody, but for me it tends to just set me up for failure and I'm not doing that to myself this year if I can help it. So just trying to keep my noise canceling headphones on as I get through the month of January and not get sucked into that stuff.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: How about you? How are you starting off the new year?
Doree: Well, I hear you
Kate: Okay
Doree: On not wanting to get sucked into New Year new me bullshit because I do think it is bullshit and it's sort of stealthily designed to make you feel bad about old year old you.
Kate: Yeah, old year old you. Yes. Good. Good luck with that.
Doree: At the same time though, Kate, and I feel like I've alluded to this a little bit already on the pod, I do feel like I need some kind of reset and I don't really know what that entails or what it looks like, but I, I'm, I'm just feeling a little off and I don't know, so maybe I am looking for some new year, new me bullshit, I don't know.
Kate: Interesting.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: So you're open to reset suggestions, maybe something like, I do this every year, that's kind of marks the launch of the new year or kind of gives me a chance to recalibrate?
Doree: No, not so much that I don't know. I, I'm feeling, think I'm feeling a little stagnant and so I don't know what, I dunno, I'm having more of an existential issue, not like I'm going to start meditating for five minutes a day even though it would probably help. You know what I mean?
Kate: Well, I do know what you mean. And I also think that the things that you and I both shared can actually go hand in hand. I don't think they're opposites necessarily.
Doree: Okay. I'm listening
Kate: Well, it sounds like the reset that you're seeking. I think what I'm saying is that I'm trying to protect myself from external pressures and it sounds to me like the reset that you're seeking is kind of an internal reset of sorts. You're doing self-reflecting, so I actually think that our intentions are kinda similar.
Doree: Okay. I'm willing to accept that.
Kate: Just a thought.
Doree: Just a thought. Okay. Okay.
Kate: Well, happy to be here in this new year with you.
Doree: Same.
Kate: Let us know how you're starting your new year, whether it's similar to what we're doing or not. Let us know. And of course, friendly reminder that Forever35 is hosted and produced by Doree Shafrir, Kate Spencer, and it's produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Happy New Year.
Doree: Bye. Happy New Year.