I’m literally appalled by Helen Mirren’s recent statements.
So much so, that when I saw the topic trending on Facebook, I actually ran upstairs, partially infuriated, to grab my computer and write this. . .because frankly, cultural appropriation is abhorrent.
Black women have owned Kim Kardashian’s derriere since the days when Saartjie Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus, was being poked and prodded as though she were chattel. These asses were ours before J-Lo’s was extolled as some sort of eighth wonder of the ancient world.
The historical trajectory of cultural appropriation is maddening, and this ideology that “everything old is new again” when non-people of color discover it, or exploit it, for the first time is complete and utter, defenseless nonsense.
During this ill-informed declaration, Madame Mirren also decided to enlighten us all to the fact that we’re “allowed to have thighs now”. THIGHS. Chile, please. My ancestors’ thighs birthed the masters’ babies, and Helen Mirren is likely a descendant of one of those unions. THESE thighs are connected to the butts connected to the backs that this country is built upon.
I am over these facocta culture vultures. They have been attempting to sharecrop the most lauded aspects of Black culture and beauty, quite literally, forever. But stealing things that don’t belong to them is nothing new.
Yet when the time to actually BE Black and stand against social injustices and atrocities committed against People of Color arises, they’re nowhere to be found.
So, please, Helen, and folks who are enticed by her spurious commentary, I beg of you…sit the f— down somewhere and give reverence where reverence is due. And no reverence is due either to Kim Kardashian or J-Lo for the curves Black women have flourished with, even when we were attacked, assaulted and berated because of them.
In this day and age, what the perpetrators of these myths fail to understand is that their cultural appropriation only reinforces what everyone knows to be true, but simply doesn’t want to admit.
Black Women, you see, are God.
