Gravity stole my bottom.
What used to resemble a pair of cantaloupes, now resembled a pancake. Looking sideways into the closet mirror, at first I didn’t believe it. I turned to a three-quarters view. I cleaned my glasses. I cleaned the mirror. I took a below-the-waist selfie. The evidence was undeniable.
If only there had been a warning. I’d known gravity would claim other body parts as I aged, but a round posterior was part and parcel to being a black woman. I’ve known only one African American woman whose shape departed from this norm—Bonita, a college dorm-mate. Other black girls sneered at her flattened backside, as though it made her less black, as though she’d sold out.
Having grown up with a white step-mom, white cousins, in-laws, and family friends, all shaped just like Bonita, I hadn’t understood why her rear end had been such an affront.
I grew up flipping through Vogue and Cosmopolitan, the pages filled with images of Lauren Hutton, Jerry Hall, and Marissa Berenson. Images of flat-bottomed women were ubiquitous. When Iman and Beverly Johnson began to show up in the fashion magazines, I became aware of what had been missing: images of me. I was absent from television commercials and billboards. Designers didn’t engineer clothes that fit an African-American's shape. The older I got, the angrier I got. I was invisible. I didn’t count. After decades of shopping trips that were exercises in political outrage, I was fuming at Bonita’s bottom, too.
Now I was stuck with it.
I dropped onto the bed on top of the down comforter, which fluffed around me, unconcerned about my shape. I had wanted to age with grace, rolling with the changes, soaking up the wisdom. Lying there in my foul mood, I neither rolled nor soaked. Suppose I died this instant. Here lies Dawn Downey. Her last thought was, what happened to my bottom?
I got up and faced the truth, grabbed a hand mirror so I could see from behind like in a dressing room three-way mirror. Over my shoulder I saw an anonymous body part. It held neither political affiliation nor ethnic identification.
No big deal.
I went to the closet to get dressed—a wasteland of ill-fitting clothes. Jeans that used to be too big in the waist were now too big everywhere.
One thing about Bonita—she always had cute clothes.
I threw on an ill-fitting outfit and grabbed my purse. Dillard’s was having a sale.
What used to resemble a pair of cantaloupes, now resembled a pancake. Looking sideways into the closet mirror, at first I didn’t believe it. I turned to a three-quarters view. I cleaned my glasses. I cleaned the mirror. I took a below-the-waist selfie. The evidence was undeniable.
If only there had been a warning. I’d known gravity would claim other body parts as I aged, but a round posterior was part and parcel to being a black woman. I’ve known only one African American woman whose shape departed from this norm—Bonita, a college dorm-mate. Other black girls sneered at her flattened backside, as though it made her less black, as though she’d sold out.
Having grown up with a white step-mom, white cousins, in-laws, and family friends, all shaped just like Bonita, I hadn’t understood why her rear end had been such an affront.
I grew up flipping through Vogue and Cosmopolitan, the pages filled with images of Lauren Hutton, Jerry Hall, and Marissa Berenson. Images of flat-bottomed women were ubiquitous. When Iman and Beverly Johnson began to show up in the fashion magazines, I became aware of what had been missing: images of me. I was absent from television commercials and billboards. Designers didn’t engineer clothes that fit an African-American's shape. The older I got, the angrier I got. I was invisible. I didn’t count. After decades of shopping trips that were exercises in political outrage, I was fuming at Bonita’s bottom, too.
Now I was stuck with it.
I dropped onto the bed on top of the down comforter, which fluffed around me, unconcerned about my shape. I had wanted to age with grace, rolling with the changes, soaking up the wisdom. Lying there in my foul mood, I neither rolled nor soaked. Suppose I died this instant. Here lies Dawn Downey. Her last thought was, what happened to my bottom?
I got up and faced the truth, grabbed a hand mirror so I could see from behind like in a dressing room three-way mirror. Over my shoulder I saw an anonymous body part. It held neither political affiliation nor ethnic identification.
No big deal.
I went to the closet to get dressed—a wasteland of ill-fitting clothes. Jeans that used to be too big in the waist were now too big everywhere.
One thing about Bonita—she always had cute clothes.
I threw on an ill-fitting outfit and grabbed my purse. Dillard’s was having a sale.
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