“Yeah, I love cheeky bottoms even though my butt is big!”
I knew the Victoria’s Secret saleswoman meant well when she said that, but she wasn’t helping my case. I needed cheeky bottoms because my ass is tiny. Miniature. Microscopic if your vision isn’t a perfect 20/20. I heard that cheeky bottoms might enhance it, so I beelined it to Vicky’s in search of some less than 24 hours before I was set to hop on a plane for a girl’s weekend in Miami.
I once wrote on my blog that “I’ve been told that my ass is ‘fat’, ‘flat’ and ‘perfect.’ All adjectives used by men. My ass has had so many words used to describe it that it’s suffering from a dissociative identity disorder.” I don’t know if the cheeky bottoms I purchased really did anything except for pacify my incessant and mounting insecurities about my gluteus maximus.
There are often times two competing women in my head fighting one another like territorial cats. One woman is strong. She doesn’t take anybody’s crap. She proudly proclaims and knows she is a feminist. That woman knows that real woman do not need to have curves. Real women need to have thoughts and opinions and something to say. That woman doesn’t care what her ass looks like or if a bra helps her titties sit high and pretty. That woman puts on whatever is comfortable and feels good. That woman hates high heels and loves combat boots. That is the woman who jumps on stage at open mic shows and pens blog posts. Then there is another woman who cringes when she sees the stretch marks on her breasts in a bikini photo. That woman looks at her butt in the mirror more often than not when she’s alone in her apartment and wishes the top of it were a bit more plump. That woman spends $50 dollars every few months on a new bra from the Victoria’s Secret “Very Sexy” collection. That woman buys 5-inch heels even though she probably won’t wear them. That woman says she doesn’t like herself in photos. That woman is one crazy and relentless b-.
I reached a point in life where I had to accept my ass would never reach the appropriate levels of contour to be considered a good black girl ass. The extra bit of pigment in my skin makes me all too susceptible to standards of black women beauty, often times cultivated by the desires of black men. Generally speaking, that’s a standard of beauty that applauds curves, thickness and a woman with a little (but not too much) meat on her bones. It’s a standard of beauty that believes a woman’s shape should be akin to that of a Coke bottle. I’m pretty sure only .073% of the population fits that bill.
Plus, most Coke bottles are plastic; women are glass. We are fragile. We break. We shatter. And when we’re cracked, our shape never looks quite the same. But, we often times break and shatter because we’re looking at ourselves in a societal mirror that will never, ever show our actual reflections back. The dynamo of a woman in me says it’s our job to lift that mirror high over our heads and hurl it the ground. It’s the mirror, not us, that needs to shatter. It’s the mirror that needs to break. It’s the mirror that needs to crack. It’s the mirror, not us, that’s really the problem.
I have to remind myself time and time again that trying to view my own beauty through the eyes of others, especially men, will always blur my image beyond recognition. That reminder feels fruitless on days when the relentless b- of an insecure woman inside of me is shouting her head off. But, I remind myself anyway, if only to quell her shouts.
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Tyece is the creator of Twenties Unscripted where she offers a sincere, sassy and sometimes smart-assy take on growing up. Follow her on Twitter @tyunscripted.
