The Sad Story Of The Woman Exhibited For Her Big Buttocks
This story dates back to the 19th century, in that time without reason when slavery wrote unpleasant episodes. The name of the protagonist of is Saartjie Baartman, a young woman exhibited as suffering from a genetic anomaly.
Read on to discover the incredible vicissitudes of this woman .
Kidnapping and slavery
Saartjie Baartman was 20 years old and led a normal life in his country. He belonged to the African ethnic group of the Khoikhoi, people accustomed to living off the products of the earth, animals and with the deep-rooted habits dictated by religion.
She was completely unaware of what existed beyond Africa’s horizon: a continent widely attacked and humiliated by Europeans. But one day it was kidnapped by Hendrik Cezar and Alexander Dunlop, two Frenchmen who saw in Saartjie’s body a peculiarity on which to profit.
This young woman, in fact, suffered from a genetic anomaly now called steatopygia, a very common disease among African tribes such as the Bushmen and the Hottentots. It is nothing more than an abnormal accumulation of fat in the buttocks, also typical in all those people who suffer from soft obesity.
However, the case of Saartjie attracted a lot of attention. These two men saw in this girl the means to enrich themselves: to exhibit her in London theaters and parties.
The woman called “black Venus”
They called it the black Venus or the Hottentot Venus , in reference to the country and ethnic group from which it came. Without knowing how and why, Saartjie found himself in a few days on the stages of several London theaters.
The show was as simple as it was humiliating. The young woman had to undress and exhibit her forms in front of all those eyes that watched her full of morbid expectations.
Most of this audience, as is easy to imagine, was made up of men from different social classes. They did not hesitate to pay large sums of money just to see the young Hottentot and her big buttocks.
Evening after evening the same spectacle was repeated for four long years, a real psychological torture for this woman who without wanting or desiring it became a freak.
The men who enslaved her got rich so quickly that they didn’t think twice about repeating the experience in another capital. In this way, after four years, they left for Paris.
In Paris too, the exhibition achieved considerable success; the evil looks, curious and hungry for the singular aspect of the young Saartije guaranteed crowded theaters, but the men also requested the girl for private acts.
It was precisely in these cases that it was most observed and in which its “owners” received the most money. Fortunately, the voices of abolitionists who saw in this treatment an unforgivable humiliation and a depraved act that had to be prohibited immediately did not take long to make their way.
Hendrik Cezar and Alexander Dunlop defended themselves from criticism by saying that Saartje voluntarily lent herself to these shows because she wanted to, which can be demonstrated with the contract she signed. However, this document was drawn up in Dutch, a language which the young woman, of course, was completely ignorant of.
The end of a life of suffering
The criticism of the black Venus show became more and more continuous, therefore the two French were forced to put an end to the event and to sell Saartje. They sold it to a French merchant who exploited the girl’s fame to take advantage of it.
However, he took advantage of the girl in an even more obscure and humiliating way: he organized private shows in which he continued to perform her, in caves of the Parisian streets where he forced her to prostitute herself, so that all the men who wanted to, could go to bed with the young girl with large buttocks, the famous Hottentot Venus.
The death of the woman
Saartjie spent several years like this, until gradually this life of suffering and unhappiness ended up reflecting on her health. The origin of his death remains unclear : syphilis, tuberculosis, pneumonia and, of course, sadness. An immense sadness in front of a life that he was never able to understand.
Not even after death was he able to have peace. They dissected Saartjie’s body to exhibit it once again, at the Museé de lHomme in Paris.
The brain, genitals and skeleton were exhibited. They remained on display until the 1970s, as a testimony of human cruelty and all that slavery meant for our society.
Nelson Mandela, in 1984, asked that the remains of the young woman be sent to Africa to be buried and to finally be able to give rest and peace to the woman, in the land that had seen her born and from which she would never have to leave.
The woman with the big buttocks is another example of those stories that should never have happened and that must never be repeated again.
