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We’re Officially in the Era of the Big Booty
SEPTEMBER 9, 2014 4:25 PM by PATRICIA GARCIA
As we await the premiere of Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea’s new music video, it would appear that the big booty has officially become ubiquitous. In music videos, in Instagram photos, and on today’s most popular celebrities, the measure of sex appeal is inextricably linked to the prominence of a woman’s behind.
For years it was exactly the opposite; a large butt was not something one aspired to, rather something one tried to tame in countless exercise classes. Even in fashion, that daring creative space where nothing is ever off limits, the booty has traditionally been shunned. Though nipples have long been a runway staple, the industry was scandalized when Alexander McQueen debuted his bumster pants back in 1996. And who can forget the horrified reaction to Rose McGowan’s barely-there beaded dress at the 1998 Video Music Awards? Today, Rihanna shows up to the CFDA Awards practically naked with her crack fully on display and walks off with a Fashion Icon Award.
Perhaps we have Jennifer Lopez to thank (or blame?) for sparking the booty movement. When she first arrived on the scene in the late nineties, a lot of the buzz surrounding her focused on the back of her voluptuous body. Her derrière quite literally stood out against the other sex symbols of the moment, signaling a shift away from the waif era of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss and the outrageously large-breasted Pam Anderson. Lopez’s behind was so unique, and evidently so valuable, there were rumors she had taken out insurance worth millions to protect the asset.
Around the same time, the look of pop music was set by Britney Spears’s over-toned abs. But the curvaceous bodies that made up Destiny’s Child had also started making waves on MTV. In 2001, they released “Bootylicious,” which posed the question: Can you handle this? The song was a hit, of course, and the video, a fun dance party without a twerk in sight, brought a new kind of figure into the spotlight. Still, it would be another decade before people were “ready for this jelly” to become the ultimate standard of beauty.
Enter Kim Kardashian. With a truly singular figure, Kardashian and her family debuted their reality show,Keeping Up With the Kardashians, in 2007. It made the entire clan famous, of course, but Kardashian’s behind was the real star, and was frequently employed as a plot device. In one season, Kardashian even X-rayed her body to prove her curves were real and not the by-product of artificial implants.
Instagram, when it arrived, presented media-savvy Kardashian with yet another platform for her famous butt, and she, of course, went on to inundate followers with a steady stream of portraits, slowly redefining the Hollywood body. The picture of her and friend Blac Chyna displaying their booties after a workout garnered over 600,000 likes, while that infamous selfie in a thonglike white swimsuit, taken a few months after giving birth to baby North, received well over a million.
Instagram also launched that other famous booty: the one on workout sensation Jen Selter. A civilian who just happens to do an obscene amount of squats, Selter is known for her belfies (just put two and two together) and every single one of her posts to her 4 million followers makes sure to include the bubble butt that launched her career front and center.
Then came the total bootification of pop music. At the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus proved you didn’t need to have a large butt to become a part of the conversation, you just needed to know how to attract enough attention to one. And now it seems pop musicians everywhere are baring their asses onstage or online. Shakiraand Rihanna had a booty-off in their video for “Can’t Remember to Forget You.” Beyoncé surprised the world by dropping her Visual Album last December—and her good-girl image. The racy video for “Partition” has her in a bejeweled thong on a top of a piano, while “Rocket” begins with the lyrics: “Let me sit this ass on you.”
Recently, Nicki Minaj remixed the original butt song by Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back,” into “Anaconda,” driving the point home with extreme twerking, blatant close-up shots of her booty, and cut-to-the-chase lyrics: “fukk those skinny bytches in the club/I wanna see all the big fat ass bytches in the motherfukking club.”
Which brings us full circle to J. Lo—the original trailblazing butt girl—and the imminent video for “Booty,” which she teased last week with the clip below. It features the 45-year-old doused in what looks like Vaseline or honey, prompting listeners to “Throw up your hands if you love a big booty.” It’s safe to say that, this time around, the world is thoroughly ready for the jelly.
http://www.vogue.com/1342927/booty-in-pop-culture-jennifer-lopez-iggy-azalea/
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Right now This article got Black Twitter in a frenzy on my timeline like:
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Black Twitter going in on the writer & Vouge Magazine: 
I never put stock in trends. Big butt has always been appealing. I don't need white media to tell me what is attractive.
