CORE POST #5 - Jennifer's Butt

In Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s chapter “Jennifer’s Butt,” Negrón-Muntaner discusses the implications of Jennifer Lopez’s starring role in Selena, the 1997 biopic about the famed Mexican-American singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Negrón-Muntaner especially investigates Lopez’s Puerto-Rican heritage as a qualifying factor for playing the Mexican-American popstar. While Lopez argues that her Latina background was “‘good enough’” qualification for the role, Negrón-Muntaner also argues that their body shape might have been more of a deciding factor (Negrón-Muntaner 183, 185). Negrón-Muntaner writes that “Jennifer Lopez’s close identification with Selena seemed not only based on their parallel crossover successes, but on a common experience of having a similar build, a body generally considered abject by American standards of beauty and propriety” (Negrón-Muntaner 185). In her discussion of Lopez and Selena’s bodily resemblances, Negrón-Muntaner foregrounds a body part which has grown to be synonymous with Latina beauty — a  voluptuous butt. While an enlarged bottom may represent attractiveness in Latin cultures (Negrón-Muntaner discusses Iris Chacon as a paragon of this phenomenon) the article also argues that “a big butt” is “upsetting to American image gatekeepers” because it represents behavior related to obscene functions of the body (Negrón-Muntaner 189). Negrón-Muntaner argues that “a big culo…[upsets] hegemonic (white) notions of beauty and good taste” through “three vital signs” — “Excess of food (unrestrained), excess of shitting (dirty), and excess of sex (heathen)” (Negrón-Muntaner 189). Ultimately, Negrón-Muntaner implores that a “big rear end” assists Latina women in “[reclaiming] their beauty” but also as a “more ample trope for cultural belonging” — in other words, a means to retain the  currency of beauty so beloved by their heritage (Negrón-Muntaner 192).

What I find most interesting about Negrón-Muntaner’s argument is her discussion of why a large bottom was once deemed unwanted by American notions of beauty. It seems the inverse is now true, as the Kardashians have proved over the last decade. They’ve popularized the notion that ‘bigger is better’ through countless plastic surgeries, and have thus encouraged other celebrities — even white actresses on red carpets— to flaunt their rear ends as well. Blake Lively stirred controversy when she posted a red carpet picture of herself on Instagram captioned “L.A. face with an Oakland booty.” The caption is a reference to lyrics from the song “Baby Got Back,” and highlights an embrace (albeit a misappropriated one) of large rear ends into mainstream Hollywood culture.

-Dean Moro

Core Post #5