#27. Small Butts

Kanye West is a favorite topic at SBPDL. Our fish stick loving, “no homo” espousing, George W. Bush bashing, Absolute Vodka swilling, Taylor Swift award-crashing friend is also a major lover of women who are callipygous.

Rumors of Kanye West’s love interests include Kym Kardasian, Beyonce and his current squeeze Amber Rose (a female who would pass the paper bag test).

Wait, you might be asking. Back it up. What does callipygous mean?:

“pertaining to or having finely developed buttocks; "the quest for the callipygian ideal."

Big butts. A large backside. Junk in your trunk. Black people love big butts, but you’ll be hard pressed to ever hear or read the phrase callipygous in Black people’s songs about butts. Though, Black people do love big butts, as we consult Sir Mix-a-Lot and his song Baby Got Back:

I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough
'Cause you notice that butt was stuffed
Deep in the jeans she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I wanna get with you
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that butt you got makes me so horny
Ooh, Rump-o'-smooth-skin
You say you wanna get in my Benz?
Well, use me, use me
'Cause you ain't that average groupie
I've seen them dancin'
To hell with romancin'
She's sweat, wet,
Got it goin' like a turbo 'Vette
I'm tired of magazines
Sayin' flat butts are the thing
Take the average black man and ask him that
She gotta pack much back
So, fellas! (Yeah!) Fellas! (Yeah!)
Has your girlfriend got the butt? (Hell yeah!)
Tell 'em to shake it! (Shake it!) Shake it! (Shake it!)
Shake that healthy butt!
Baby got back!

This song is beloved by Black people as well as white people, and yet it hints at a general truth that most people find unnerving. Black people have and Black men love big butts. Some Black people have large butts because they fail to pass on seconds, but others have them because that evil Mendel might have been correct in his theories:

(Gregor Mendel) He came to three important conclusions from these experimental results,

• that the inheritance of each trait is determined by "units" or "factors" that are passed on to descendents unchanged
• that an individual inherits one such unit from each parent for each trait
• that a trait may not show up in an individual but can still be passed on to the next generation.

A former NFL commentator – no less a scientific mind then Mendel – Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, spent years watching Black people compete in professional football and formed this interesting hypothesis:

"On Jan. 15, 1988, Rather himself aired video shot that afternoon at Duke Zeibert's restaurant in Washington, D.C., featuring Snyder explaining why he thought African-Americans excelled in sports.

"The black is the better athlete," The Greek said. "And he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started."

In Africa, Black people of some of the indigenous tribes have gluts that would make Beyonce or other women that Sir-Mix-a-Lot canonized in his early 1990s song quite jealous of and would drive your average Black man into a fit of adolescent joy, thanks to Steatopygia:

"...is a high degree of fat accumulation in and around the buttocks. The deposit of fat is not confined to the gluteal regions, but extends to the outside and front of the thighs, forming a thick layer reaching sometimes to the knee.

This development constitutes a genetic characteristic of the Khoisan. It is especially prevalent in the women of this tribe, but also occurs to a lesser degree in the males. In most ethnic groups of Homo sapiens, females tend to exhibit a greater propensity to adipose tissue accumulation in the buttock region as compared with males. It has also been observed among the Pygmies of Central Africa and the Onge-tribe of the Andaman Islands. Among the Khoisan, it is regarded as a sign of beauty: it begins in infancy and is fully developed by the time of the first pregnancy. It is often accompanied by the formation known as elongated labia (labia minora that may extend as much as 4 inches outside the vulva). This was historically known as the "hottentot apron".

Steatopygia would seem to have been a characteristic of a population which once extended from the Gulf of Aden to the Cape of Good Hope, of which stock Khoisan and Pygmies are remnants. While the Khoisan afford the most noticeable examples of its development, it occurs in other parts of Africa, and occurs even more frequently among male Basters than among Khoikhoi women. It is also observed among females of Andamanese Negritos."

Some Black women in Africa desire big butts so much that they augment them with injections:

“Bobaraba! It means “big bottom,” and it's a hit song and butt-shaking dance phenom sweeping the Ivory Coast, the BBC reports. In fact, some women in the west African nation are so caught up in bobaraba-mania that a black market of “bottom enhancers” has emerged, targeting those who want more junk in the trunk."

The efficacy of the treatments, sold as injections or balms with no ingredients listed, is highly questionable, and some local medical officials are concerned about possible dangers.”

Rap videos, though they have gone soft, now are a mere parade of thick-souled sistas gyrating in swimsuits, with young Black men dancing around them doing their best to dispel rumors of “no homo” and reinforcing the notion of liking big butts.

So, if Black people find big butts desirable, on both the continent of Africa where they spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving and in the United States, where they have spent the last 400 years, this must prove Mendel correct.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like, by the powers of inherited traits and genetics invested in Black people, includes small butts for Black people are predisposed for loving big butts. Sir-Mix-a-Lot did the world a favor when he sang about the advantages of large butts in the eyes of Black people, as he provided us all with a glimpse into the mind of the Black man.