Summary Of The Hottentot Venus By Sarah Baartman

Separate standards
Representations of Sarah Baartman marked a new tendency toward linking the savage to raw sexuality (Abrahams, 1998: 227). Baartman,“The Hottentot Venus” was representative of primitive sexuality and ugliness. She became an icon of the commodification of the female black body and the exploitation of female black sexuality (Ruiz, 2013: 137). Fascination with Baartman stemmed from the stark difference of her body from the standard body shape that was expectant of woman in Britain at the time. Specifically, the freak show focused on the “unusual” size of her backside and genitals, provoking the attention of both a male and female audience. White men were lured by the “exotic” aspect of her exhibit, while women felt attracted
While she was never exhibited as fully naked, her dress was contrived to look nonexistent (Abraham, 1998: 226). She wore a tailor-made leotard “fashioned from a figure-hugging fabric of silk and cotton. The adornment she wore was fabricated to cover her pubis and the hanging piece it had were elaborated to hide her famous “Hottentot apron” or elongated labia typical of her civilization” (qtd. in Ruiz, 2013: 143). Conventional norms of decency seemed to be inapplicable to women of color. In Baartman’s case, there almost seemed to be an invitation to explore what lay beneath her thin
Interests in Bartman’s anatomy were translated into ‘scientific’ research from which the findings were spread through popular education. The nineteenth century featured a period in history when the classification of individuals began to dominate scientific and medical discourses (Ruiz, 2013: 147). “Scientific” examinations were aimed at proving Negro and woman’s inferiority. At the time, the popular belief was that blacks could not feel pain. This idea was specifically suggested by French scientist, Louis Figuer, who found (after “extensive experimentation”) that “blacks were endowed with thick skins and insensitive nervous systems, making them impervious to pain” (Abrahams, 1998: 230). Such “scientific” findings were distributed throughout the press and public lectures, creating a climate that validated racism. Thus, illegitimate reasons justifying the “othering” of blacks were accepted because they were “scientifically proven”. As a result, it was the popular belief that blacks had been “proven” to be “abnormal”, “freaks of nature”. The acceptance of such findings as truth implied an acceptance of a conceptual split between black and white gender roles and an acceptance of its sexist