BBLs and Blackfishing: The Commodification of Blackness through Contemporary Celebrity and Mainstream Culture

Celebrities are no longer just entertainers, they are powerful influencers who shape consumer trends (Graham, 2023). These consumer trends go beyond fashion and bleed through to body image, positioning the female body as a trend. In 2012 the body positivity movement began, challenging predominant mainstream white culture by encouraging the circulation of empowering body images and advocating for the visibility of bodies that do not fit mainstream beauty norms (Sastre, 2016). The mainstream beauty norms within Western culture at this time prized thin, fair-skinned, able-bodied women with an extremely sparse representation of black women or larger body types. The motivations of the movement still have a positive impact on today’s society. However, this new widespread idealisation of black and curvy bodies, despite possibly providing a positive element of cultural assimilation also exaggerated racial stereotypes and unfortunately cultivated a new unrealistic body standard of the “slim thick” ideal. Since curvy black bodies were now ‘acceptable’ in mainstream culture,  white women commodifying blackness became increasingly more common. This essay will closely examine the concept of the commodification of blackness through black feminist thought and theory most prominently Bell Hooks’ notion of commodifying or ‘eating’ the Other, by analysing celebrity culture’s role in culturally appropriating Black women. 

The term ‘blackfishing’ was coined by Wanna Thomson in 2018, it is used to describe an aberration of the concept of catfishing, whereby (majoritively) white women cosplay as being black by using makeup, hairstyles and fashion that originate in black culture (Cherid, 2021). The counterpart to blackfishing is ‘cultural appropriation’ which can be defined as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the practices, customs, or aesthetics of one social or ethnic group by members of another (typically dominant) community or society.” (Oxford English Dictionary). Celebrities who have come under fire for cultural appropriation include Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Ariana Grande, Mylie Cyrus, Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, and Jessy Nelson. The inappropriate adoption of black aesthetics or features can most notably be recognised for the sudden desirability of non-black women having surgical fat transfers, more commonly known as a Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) to enhance the size of their posteriors. The popularisation of the curvy body ideal (or “slim thick” ) by celebrities is one way in which blackness has been commodified.  

The White Fascination with the ‘Other’  

The Brazilian Butt Lift (BLL) is the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the world. According to a survey conducted by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in 2022, the number of BBLs performed globally has exponentially grown by 77.6% since 2015 (Saber Plastic Surgery, 2022). However, recently there appears to be a trend for reversal of this procedure with a 5000% increase in internet searches for “Kardashian reverse BBL” since August of 2021 (Gilbert, 2022). A 2023 study from the National Library of Medicine stated that “aesthetic surgery trends continue to evolve and are often popularised by social media, particularly with celebrity influence [...] the data indicates that there is increasing public interest in the reversal of gluteal fat grafting, which appears to correlate with social media trends” (Safeek, Dang & Mast, 2023), this trend being skinniness. In the essay “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”, cultural critic and feminist Bell Hooks describes how non-white cultures, deemed as the ‘Other’, are often commodified by white people for their desire or intrigue to “transgress racial boundaries”  by experiencing pleasure outside of their (white) norm ( 1992, p. 367 ). Hooks uses the analogy that “Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (1992, p. 21). This ‘dull dish’ that is mainstream white culture can be related to the adoption of the black body and how white people have appropriated an element of the black identity, thereby ‘seasoning’ their whiteness with the spice that is black ethnicity.

The adoption of the curvy physique becoming a transient trend is parallel to Hooks’ theory of the commodification of Otherness. In one of the essay’s closing sentences, Hooks states that there is an “overriding fear is that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences will be continually commodified and offered up as new dishes to enhance the white palate – that the Other will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten” (Hooks, 1992. Pg 380). Black bodies being ignorantly appropriated through the BBL ‘trend’ and now being reversed shows how Otherness has been consumed by the white and soon forgotten. Otherness integrates with Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality. "Intersectionality is a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that often are not understood among conventional ways of thinking" (1989). When the term ‘Intersectionality’ was first coined in 1989, its primary focus was the overlapping of the biological factors of sex and race and how this related to oppression and discrimination, recognising the “double oppression” that black women face. Black women’s realities are more than a problem of patriarchy but instead exist within intersecting oppressions of racism, sexism, and classism (Mowat, French & Malebranche, 2013). Establishing the connection between the commodification of blackness and blackfishing to intersectionality, white women may be discriminated against for their sex but they are privileged for their race. White women commodifying blackness reduces the black culture down to just that; a commodity. The legacy of racial oppression, slavery, and colonization is disregarded to serve as a costume for non-black women to wear for a while until the next trend they adopt. 

Black female bodies have historically been considered grotesque, animalistic, and unnatural (Carroll, 2000; Gilman, 1985 as cited in Mowat, French & Malebranche, 2013). Saartjie Baartman, also known as the ‘Hottonut Venus' was an African woman who was enslaved in 1810 and taken to London where her body was paraded in shows for paying audiences. Baartman had a condition now recognised as "steatopygia", which resulted in extremely protuberant buttocks due to a build-up of fat. Baartman can be viewed as the epitome of colonial exploitation and racism, commodification and the ridicule of black people (Parkinson, 2016). The exploitation Baartman faced is a prime example of how white people consume the Other, they see the Other as desirable and exotic, or otherwise different to themselves. Hooks proposes that “this exploration into the world of difference, into the body of the Other, will provide a greater, more intense pleasure than any that exists in the ordinary world of one’s familiar racial group” (Hooks, 1992, p. 369). The author of The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman said that “at the time, it was highly fashionable and desirable for women to have large bottoms, so lots of people envied what she had naturally, without having to accentuate her figure” (Holmes, 2007).  The Regency era that Baartman was enslaved in prized the curvy figure and emulated this through their clothing with undergarments such as corsets and bustles designed to enhance their hips and buttocks to appeal to the male’s primal desire to reproduce (Historical sewing, 2021), the hourglass illusion imitating a perfect childbearing physique.  However, during Baartmans enslavement, a doctor described her features as “amusing, inferior and oversexed” (Young, 1997 as cited in Mowat, French & Malebranche, 2013) which displays racial bias and discrimination when considering the endorsement of artificial curviness in the West during this period. Black women’s curves became fetishized by white people and a form of fascination, intrigue, and envy, but for women of colour, their curves are inherently related to hypersexual stereotyping. 

The hypersexualised black woman 

The ‘jezebel’ is a common stereotypical representation of Black women, she is a seductive woman who is highly sexualized and valued purely for her sexuality (Donavon, 2007 & Jewell, 1993 as cited in Anderson, Holland & Johnson, 2018 ).  The stereotype of the hyper-sexualized black woman still exists within modern media, perhaps even more predominantly than ever. Black women’s bodies are fetishized as a continuation of their exploitation during the U.S colonisation. The power dynamics of slavery encouraged the rape and sexual exploitation of black female slaves. (Holmes, 2016) There were laws during the Colonial era that existed in the U.S to criminalise sexual relations between the black and white, but these laws were primarily made to protect white male perpetrators. Black women were unjustly held accountable for ‘seducing’ the slave owners and subjected to harsher punishment (Browne -Marshall, 2009). Crenshaw argues that a robust understanding of misogyny and racism racism “cannot be captured wholly by looking separately at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences” (Crenshaw, as cited in James, 2011). Black female slaves were wrongfully persecuted and unfairly stereotyped to fit the narrative of a calculated seductress, but as Crenshaw proposes this is due to not only the biological factor of race but also their sex. This falsely constructed narrative of sexually promiscuous black women can be traced back from the Colonial era and has unfortunately carried on through to modern mainstream media. In hip-hop music, women are commonly referred to as ‘hoes’ which derives from the term whore, meaning female prostitute, or an offensive term for a woman who is thought to have a lot of sexual partners (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d).  Black women are also objectified and often described solely by their shape. Misogynistic lyrics about their ‘asses’/‘booties’/ ‘butts’, small waists and ‘big tits’ are a common feature of rap music, once more limiting black women to this narrow representation whereby they are often positioned in a hypersexual role, character or subject. 

However, the female black body as a commodity can be challenged by the agency of black female artists who chose a hypersexualized image for themselves. Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice are among the most visible female rap artists at present who chose to self sexualize and objectify. It must be taken into consideration that the music industry is heavily male dominated, with a 2022 study on representation and equality in the music industry indicating that approximately 96.6 percent of producers were male, with a saddening 3.4 percent being female (Statista, 2022). Female rap artists are, in part, responsible for willingly choosing to participate in a culture that objectifies black women, however, they will be continually subjected to the pressures of the capitalist, white patriarchy that exists within the music industry recognizing that performing in this hypersexualized way will enable them visibility in 

mainstream music (Ashley Viola, 2023). Columnist Janice Turner argued that Girls and women (not specifically women of colour) are encouraged to become endowed with agency on the condition that it is used to construct oneself as a subject closely resembling the heterosexual male fantasy that is found in pornography (Turner, n.d, as cited in Gill, 2007). To contradict Turner, Hook’s proposes that the the body of the Other (a black female rapper in this context), is seen as existing to serve the ends of white male desires (1992). Through this societal expectation or on the contrary; through their own sexual agency and hypersexuality, the black body once again becomes a spectacle for the white with the industry standard that female rap artists must be sexually promiscuous to achieve global visibility and success.  

The 2010’s ubiquitous assimilation of the black body and the replicas of this physique by non-black women through the medium of mainstream music and pop culture has further culturally appropriated and fetishized black culture. Suddenly the black “curvy”, “thick”  body was dubbed the “Kardashian booty” and is being replicated by the masses. In 2019, there were over 40,000 BBLs performed in the US alone (Saber Plastic Surgery, 2022). The popularity of celebrities with physiques different from the usual thin Caucasian ideal does demonstrate a broader range of body type ideals for women by prizing curvaceous, bigger figures in society but it has simultaneously helped promote sexual objectification of women’s bodies. The common public perception began to lean into the conclusion that men would prefer curvier women (this physique being generally associated with women of colour) over thinner women.  However, the ‘trendiness’ of blackness is disappearing. As the “BBL Era” is burning out, a disturbing new trend is rising. Hook's framework of the Other being “eaten, consumed and forgotten” is being exercised by the celebrities who commodified and commercialised the slim thick ideal and how they are now turning back to the caucasian ideal; thin and white. Whilst fashion is not an exact science, major looks from an era return in full force almost exactly 20 years later  (Pillai, 2020), this not only applies to fashion trends but also translates into body trends. The 1990s and 2000s saw the emaciated, “heroin chic”, supermodel body type as the ideal and it's evident that highly influential celebrities like Kim Kardashians now sporting their dramatic weight loss since early 2023 is fuelling the resurgence of skinniness and in doing so forgetting the black image they have emulated and leaving it out of style once more.  

Projecting and promoting racial ambiguity 

In parallel to the BBL Era is ‘black fishing’. The trendiness of caucasian and non-black women adopting tanned skin which was unnaturally darker than their own has been common since the 1990s, but black fishing goes further than just intense tanning. Non-black women adopt many aspects of the black identity through hairstyles, manner of speech, and fashion that originate in black culture (Cherid, 2021). Throughout the 2010’s many celebrities and influencers promoted racial ambiguity. Ariana Grande’s intense tan and ‘blaccent’, the Kardashians and Iggy Azalea's forged mixed-race identity through their BBL’s, tans, and hairstyles and singers role-playing as black women in music videos like Mylie Cyrus twerking with black girls and Katy perry sporting cornrows. In the book White Negroes, cultural critic Lauren Michele Jackson sheds light on how today's generation of white people, specifically American culture, appropriates and borrows off of black culture and how this exacerbates racial inequality. Jackson writes [Kim] “Kardashian is cast as a symbol of the social acceptance of black aesthetics and the rejection of black people—with her brown features she is “ethnic but not too much so”, supplying the spice America craves without tipping into the jungle” (Jackson, 2021), referring to Hook's theory on the commodification of Otherness and the West’s fascination with the “primitive”. 

Kim and Khloe Kardashian and their half-sister Kylie Jenner have projected racial ambiguity by embracing elements of the black ‘hood’ aesthetic, wearing durags, grills, and weaves. Wanna Thompson who coined the term blackfishing spoke out on white women embodying a hood aesthetic, saying  “the ghetto [aesthetic] has been repackaged and curated to appeal to the masses,” which underpins the new forms of commodifying blackness through blackfishing (Thomspson, 2018 as cited in Stevens, 2021). Kim, Khloe, and Kylie famously went through a phase of sporting cornrows that they renamed as “boxer braids” which received warranted backlash. Cornrows were used as a sign of resistance, enslaved Africans would be able to communicate secretly often mapping escaping routes with the patterns braided into their hair. The first time cornrows were popularised by a non-black person was by white actress Bo Derek’s  character in the 1979 film ‘10’, her “iconic” braids were praised as beautiful  by the masses and media at the time (Beasley, 2021). In 2018 Kim Kardashian had braids installed (known as Fulani braids) and redubbed them “Bo Derek braids”, contributing to the popularity of braids worn by non-black women. The backlash of this was also met with people who saw the cultural appropriation argument as hypocritical, likening it to black women wearing their hair straight.  Writer and activist Michaela Angela Davis spoke out on this saying "White women were never persecuted for their hair," explaining  "For black people to adjust their hair, whatever colour, whatever extension -whether it's a weave or a wig or a braid, or all of it at the same damn time -- that is really a way that we culturally express, and some of it is historically to fit in, to be part of the mainstream” (Davis as cited in Gebreyes, 2016). A study by CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), co-founded by Dove, indicates that “black women are 80% more likely to change their natural hair to meet societal norms or expectations at work, and nearly half of Black or mixed-race women with afro or textured hair have experienced race based-hair discrimination, sometimes as early as age five” (Dove, 2020). As Crenshaw proposes, white women do not face the same discrimination that Black women do. White women who wear elements of black womanhood have commodified black culture by making it palatable to mainstream white culture without recognizing the systemic oppression behind it, it isn't just a hairstyle it is a cultural signifier. 

Celebrities rejecting the racial ambiguity they have famously projected, once more parallels Hook’s notion of the Other being “eaten, consumed, and forgotten” by white culture. For example, Ariana Grande is now a white woman again; embracing her naturally pale skin and well-spoken, soft, girly voice to replace her blaccent (formally known as African American Vernacular English). Kim Kardashian has shapeshifted with her exaggerated curves dramatically shrinking and now leans heavily on the 1980s and 90s all-American women ideal in recent photoshoots for her fashion brand SKIMS and in various magazines, sporting a blonde bombshell look throughout these. The concept of treating culture as a costume and a commodity to supply exoticism and coolnes to white womanhood is reflective of Hooks’ book Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. The metaphorical comparison that cultural difference is served up as dishes to enhance the white palate (1992), draws attention to the insignificance of the history of the double oppression that black women have faced can be to uneducated white people. The desirable parts of blackness serve as a trend, whereas historically and even presently black women often slandered for being too promiscuous, too ‘unkempt’, too fat, or too dark as a product of the intersection of both racial oppression and sex discrimination.