After this year’s AfroPunk music festival in Atlanta (which I recently attended and thoroughly enjoyed,) there was a lot of buzz surrounding this year’s lineup. However, one artist stood out among the rest. Yung Baby Tate, also known as Baby Tate, performed songs from her latest project, After the Rain, in a stunning two-piece cheetah print set, sporting a long coat a la Lil’ Kim to match as well as platform Rick Owens boots. With an amazing look and even more stellar performance, this was her time to shine in her hometown. Despite this, there was still commentary, not surrounding her talent, but her looks. Her stomach became a topic of discussion among displeased fans, and she was sure to retaliate via social media.
Would YBT be criticized the way she was if she had worn something different or less “revealing?” Absolutely. Since she’s a woman who is comfortable in her own skin wearing something that many wouldn’t dare, people were bound to have something to say. She disrupted the status quo of what is acceptable for a woman with her shape to wear, even though her shape isn’t even meant for discussion in the first place. Instead of commenting on her performance, since that’s what she came to do wearing what she wore, people had something to say on the last thing people should be worried about.
While this could easily become a think piece on how body-shaming is wrong, that would be way too easy. I simply want to know why this line was drawn in the first place between what is and what isn’t deemed an “acceptable body.” At what point did we as a society see a woman with an amount of fat, at any stage, and think that it’s wrong for her to look that way? If women are shamed for being too skinny AND being shamed for being fat AND being shamed for having an average body, where can we thrive in our honest bodies free of judgment?
Not only is this an issue pertaining to women’s bodies, but particularly to Black women. We are constantly seen for our bodies first, whether shamed or uplifted. Whether it’s comments at the family cookout or from strangers on the internet, anyone and everyone has something to say about the Black body. We are often only appreciated at the thought of what our bodies could be and not what they are as they are. Black women are often pressured to lose weight, not for the sake of health, but simply because they would “look better”. In extreme cases, many turn to surgery to have the perfectly proportioned body that is deemed desirable.
In an age where everyone claims to be so “body positive,” why does the buck stop when people in their natural bodies exist and just be?