This Blog Post is All About Shaking Your Booty

I present to you three videos...
Video #1 The music video for Sir Mix-a-lot's "Baby Got Back"
Video #2 A Youtube video titled "White boy dancing like a black girl"
Video #3 Music video from French comedian/rapper Fatal Bazooka called "J'aime trop ton boule" which roughly translates to "I really like your ass."

Dancing is something we all do whether it is for fitness, for social purposes, or we're just plain forced into it, but nevertheless it is a body practice. But where do we find our praxis, how we act, on the dance floor? These three videos all utilize the booty shake in different ways all drawing on a deep seeded association of the booty shake and females dancing (usually black or some other non-white ethnicity).

Both music videos are examples of places we look to form our own body practices. Just as we analyzed the how-do-we-learn-to-stand connection with the portrait of Eve, we can look at these (fairly) modern music videos as cultural texts that show us how women are expected to dance. Our body practices are learned from representations and music videos are some of the most prominent representations that are out there along with TV and films.

"Baby Got Back" presents the intelligible body for the black female. The big, round butt that can shake at incredible speeds is presented as something ideal, not easily attainable by any means. This also brings on the problem of the double bind; booty shaking, in the way it has been presented is not only presented as strictly gendered but it is also racially divided as well. However, both the Fatal Bazooka video and the "White Boy" video challenge this idea that only black women can shake it by presenting white men doing all the same things that black women have been doing in music videos. But, there is still the fact that when men dance by shaking their booty they are not seen as men dancing like men but merely men imitating women. Even in the title of the white boy dancing video it explicitly says "like a black girl" rather than just "white boy shaking his ass" or something like that.

To wrap up my point, through the medium of music videos, dancing, particularly this booty shake body practice is argued to be strictly feminine and desirable to men. Sir Mix-a-lot certainly makes this message clear with just the lyrics of his song, but we learn by example and the black women in his video certainly set the standard for acceptable dance moves that have been imitated on dance floors ever since.