THE STORY OF HOTTENTOT VEN-ASS (VENUS)

I was appalled when I first heard of this woman, a black woman sold as a slave to the colonialists, transported to Europe so that she could feature in freak shows because of her big posterior. It was pretty sad. So I decided to read on it and maybe inform people on the story of an objectified African woman.

Saartije Baartman, born in the Eastern Cape of South Africa was sold at age 20 by a Scottish doctor to a British showman. She could not have known that she would never see her home again nor as she stood on the deck and saw her homeland disappear behind her could she have known that she would become the icon of racial inferiority and black female sexuality for the next 100 years. She was exhibited in circus shows all over Europe in her lifetime because of her body appearance. The Europeans would pay to view her body and an added payment would allow them to poke her behind with a stick. The image and idea of "The Hottentot Venus" swept through British popular culture. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed.

In 1814 she was taken to France, and became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality. In Paris, Baartman's promoters didn't need to concern themselves with slavery charges. By the time she got to Paris, her existence was really quite miserable and extraordinarily poor. Sara was literally treated like an animal. There is some evidence to suggest that at one point a collar was placed around her neck. 


Upon death Baartman's body was sent to George Cuvier's laboratory at the Museum of Natural History for examination. Cuvier wanted to examine her remains to test his theory that the more "primitive" the mammal, the more pronounced would be the sexual organs and sexual drive. Baartman refused to be an experiment while she was alive. With permission from police, Cuvier conducted an autopsy on Baartman's dead body. First he made a cast of her body and later preserved her brain and genitals. Cuvier concluded that "the Hottentots" were closer to great apes than humans. The rest of Baartman's flesh was boiled down to bones for Cuvier's collection and displayed for years afterward. Her body did not receive a decent burial until much later when feminism and racial equality prevailed. In the name of Science, her sexual organs and brain were displayed in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris until as recently as 1985.