Who is sarah bartmann

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Howard, M. Sara Saartjie Baartman Previous Previous post: Ota Benga On various platforms, women leverage their looks to obtain paid advertisements or receive free gifts, services or merchandise from various beauty and apparel companies. So you could argue that Black women are taking control of their objectification and commodification to earn money. While Baartman may not have been able to keep the cash people paid to ogle at her, Black women today can strive for her body type and make money off it.

But is selling this body type always a form of empowerment? Initially, she was shipped off to Cape Town as a servant but things were soon to change. At the time Sarah arrived in Cape Town, indigenous African women were considered abnormal, inferior, and paradoxically, exotically desirable to many white Europeans. Sarah, with her honey brown skin and other exotic features that included her characteristic Khoisan large and protruding buttocks, soon found herself the focus of curious attention.

Dunlop put Sarah on display in London as a primitive and extraordinary phenomenon of nature, exhibiting her half naked body to anyone who was willing to pay the one shilling admittance fee. For a higher price, the more affluent in society could touch her. Her large buttocks, in particular, were a point of interest.

Although it has been said that a contract of agreement was signed between Sarah and Dunlop, this is highly unlikely as Sarah would not have been able to read or write. However, her contract allegedly stated that she would work as a domestic servant and be exhibited for entertainment purposes. For this inhuman employment, she would receive a portion of the entertainment earnings and be allowed to return to South Africa after five years. Sarah never did make it home alive and after being put on display as a half-clothed oddity in London she was taken to France and sold to an animal handler.

Here her exploitation and degradation intensified as she was led around and given instruction like an animal, while her female organs were studied as an object of macabre interest and sexual peculiarity. It is also believed that during this time she fell, or was forced, into prostitution and became a heavy drinker. While some claim she was given the option of being set free and returning home, others believe that she was coerced into continuing her role as Hottentot Venus.

It could be argued that by this stage Sarah had lost all self-respect and hope and had, in a sense, given up on life. Some reports claim she enjoyed the attention and company of French high society while others believe she was used as nothing more than a prostitute and object of sexual interest.

Popular white European opinion of the time viewed Africans as an oversexed, primal, lesser race, representing the link between animals and humans and the lowest form of human development.

Her life was the height of internalized racism, sexism and fetishization of the black woman's body by white-folk. We would love to hear what you think about the content on Pulse. Welcome to the Pulse Community!

We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Authors: Motolani Alake. November 1, AM. The woman became the subject of a social media trend yesterday. A caricature of Sarah Baartman's derogation. SA History. On October 30, , Nigerian rapper and singer, Dice Ailes released his latest single. It is titled, 'Ginika' and it is a follow-up to 'Alakori,' his collaboration single with Falz.