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There’s been a lot of twerking on Twitter lately. If your first response
was “huh?” then take comfort: when I first heard of the twerk, I
assumed it was some sort of vile kinky practice involving Twitter. The
easiest way to explain it, however, is a sort of “shake yo booty” on
steroids. Google it and you’ll find several helpful how-to videos on
YouTube.
To be able to twerk, you need one thing: a bum. A big one. This is a revelation for me, because I’ve hated my bum ever since I realized I had one. I hit puberty in the 1980s, when bums were flat. They extended seamlessly from the top of the thigh into a Calvin Klein jeanpant. Bums had to look great from behind, but be almost indistinguishable from the side.
When I was seventeen, I tried to diet all my curves into non-existence. I succeeded with the boobs (down to 32AA) and almost got rid of the stomach. But the bum stubbornly refused to shift. Oh, how I hated it. I’d line up next to the mirror and glare at myself, wishing I could airbrush out my sticky-out bits in real life.
Since then, things have changed. During the 1990s, stars like Jennifer Lopez and the aesthetic of Brazilian women became fashionable. Suddenly, the stick thin ideal became undesirable, and a more African silhouette was the kind of thing that women paid their plastic surgeons to give them. The ATM (African trademark) has culminated in Kim Kardashian, and everybody seems to want one.
So it seems that maybe I’m in line with fashion after all. Oh, I still get reminded why I’ll never love myself. “Your ass is getting big,” said my friend at dinner a few weeks ago (gay guys can say this to women and get away with it). “You’re going to look like Saartjie Baartman soon.”
He was joking, but it stung. Still, as Meryl Streep once said, every woman reaches a point where she has to choose between her face and her ass. My face is good for my age, but my backside betrays me. I hate its lumpiness and the way it answers to the siren call of gravity. It hangs around behind me like a stray dog lurking around the kitchen door waiting for leftover spaghetti bolognaise. I want to tell it to go away, but it won’t.
Twerking is one of those things that have taught me that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe having a big bum isn’t entirely a bad thing. (It would be nice if the local Virgin Active offered a twerking class – based on my attempts to master it so far, it’s great for thighs and abs.) Look, I’m never actually going to like my bum. But who knows – if I learnt to shake my booty, maybe I can learn to live with it.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
To be able to twerk, you need one thing: a bum. A big one. This is a revelation for me, because I’ve hated my bum ever since I realized I had one. I hit puberty in the 1980s, when bums were flat. They extended seamlessly from the top of the thigh into a Calvin Klein jeanpant. Bums had to look great from behind, but be almost indistinguishable from the side.
When I was seventeen, I tried to diet all my curves into non-existence. I succeeded with the boobs (down to 32AA) and almost got rid of the stomach. But the bum stubbornly refused to shift. Oh, how I hated it. I’d line up next to the mirror and glare at myself, wishing I could airbrush out my sticky-out bits in real life.
Since then, things have changed. During the 1990s, stars like Jennifer Lopez and the aesthetic of Brazilian women became fashionable. Suddenly, the stick thin ideal became undesirable, and a more African silhouette was the kind of thing that women paid their plastic surgeons to give them. The ATM (African trademark) has culminated in Kim Kardashian, and everybody seems to want one.
So it seems that maybe I’m in line with fashion after all. Oh, I still get reminded why I’ll never love myself. “Your ass is getting big,” said my friend at dinner a few weeks ago (gay guys can say this to women and get away with it). “You’re going to look like Saartjie Baartman soon.”
He was joking, but it stung. Still, as Meryl Streep once said, every woman reaches a point where she has to choose between her face and her ass. My face is good for my age, but my backside betrays me. I hate its lumpiness and the way it answers to the siren call of gravity. It hangs around behind me like a stray dog lurking around the kitchen door waiting for leftover spaghetti bolognaise. I want to tell it to go away, but it won’t.
Twerking is one of those things that have taught me that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe having a big bum isn’t entirely a bad thing. (It would be nice if the local Virgin Active offered a twerking class – based on my attempts to master it so far, it’s great for thighs and abs.) Look, I’m never actually going to like my bum. But who knows – if I learnt to shake my booty, maybe I can learn to live with it.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
