Butts Are Back: The Ass Is Having Another Pop Culture Moment
LatestThicke’s video takes place on a football field, against a backdrop of real-life dancers from troupes like the Albany State University Glden Passionettes and the Alabama State University Stingettes, some of whom performed at the VMA’s with Thicke on Sunday. The dancers do their thing, with much dedicated butt-shaking. Butt-shaking is such an important part of this video that the dancers end up performing next to and on a float of a huge butt that also shakes.
In case you weren’t sure that what you’re looking at is in fact an ass float, Thicke and crew have helpfully used their words to explain it to you:
The actual song is devoid of extensive ass references, except for a brief moment during Kendrick’s verse:
Now you gettin’ this dick, love
I’m looking for you with a flashlight
I want to feel what a real fat ass like
No injection, I learned my lesson
Who can we credit with this ass-plosion? Certainly not Flo Rida and Pitbull, though they pushed the trend along with their video for “Can’t Believe it”. Not even Busta Rhymes and Nicki Minaj, Queen of the Ass, can be given too many props their video “Twerk It” which came out in July.
Alternatively, the ass has, in recent years, almost taken on a life of its own, completely separated from the actual human females with personalities that they are attached to. Its staying power represents a continued sexualization of women that, as the ass becomes popular, becomes more and more detached from the actual women owning their own bodies and dancing for themselves. Instead, the large, jiggling butts – and by extension, the women who have them – become a literal prop in a music video for a man (or lately, a woman) much more rich, powerful and well-known than they are.
Ultimately, we can’t really blame one person in the origin story of the ass. Unless we decide to pin it on that one loudmouth guy who found some woman who loved it when men talked about her ass.