When Jen Selter couldn’t decide what to do with her life after graduating from high school, she got a job working at the front desk of a gym. She took to working out after shifts and posting photos of herself in colorful fitness clothes. About a year ago, the photos started gaining a certain kind of fame for what many considered Selter’s best asset: her bottom.
“I was never like, ‘Oh, my butt,’” Selter said. “When I was growing up, everyone wanted to look like skinny, bony girls. Over time, butts have become a thing.” So much so that Selter’s “belfie” photos (a portmanteau of “butt” and “selfie”) have attracted almost 4.5 million followers on Instagram and a photo shoot in Vanity Fair.
“It’s interesting,” said Selter, who works out four or five days a week. “How a butt can make you.”
Photo: Reuters
You don’t say. This summer, the video for Anaconda, Nicki Minaj’s ode to the posterior, garnered 19.6 million views in the first 24 hours of its release. Two other videos prominently featured the behind: Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off and Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass, in which she sang of “that boom-boom that all the boys chase.”
This year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue featured models Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge and Chrissy Teigen all posing with their bottoms to the camera.
Women can choose from one of several lines of jeans that promise to lift their buttocks (including the YMI Wanna Betta Butt, which now has a huge billboard gracing 49th and Broadway).
For anyone obsessive enough to worry about the size of the pores on her rear end, there is a US$65 facial at Skin by Molly in Williamsburg, which promises to “smooth out rough skin with steam and extractions. It’s just like a facial ... except for your bum.”
And as any SoulCycle devotee will report, there is a large and varied repertory of songs in praise of the posterior, including Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back and Major Lazer’s Bubble Butt.
The rear is fast becoming the erogenous zone of choice in America, vying for eminence with breasts, abs, legs or, for those of us who came of age in the early ‘90s, Linda Hamilton’s sinewy arms in Terminator 2. Captivating back-end views of amply endowed personalities have stirred the popular imagination, prompting many women, it would seem, to chase after gawk-worthy curves of their own.
Not that this is exactly new. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Jessica Biel, Rihanna, Serena Williams, Pippa Middleton and Beyonce (who, on her tour that just ended, wore a bodysuit with the tush cutout) have all been praised for their behinds. But perhaps no one has been more celebrated than Jennifer Lopez, whose buttocks were called “in and of themselves, a cultural icon” in Vanity Fair.
‘LARGE-SCALE SITUATION’
Tina Fey cited Lopez’s influence in Bossypants. “The first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style,” she wrote. “That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American Beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them.”
Rob Zangardi, a fashion stylist who has worked with Lopez, noted that her breakout role in Selena in 1997 “came at a time when the media, fashion and Hollywood were obsessed with a more slender frame.”
“Jen stood out because she was different and embraced it,” he said.
But fashion, too, has taken a turn, with nipped-in waists and form-fitting dresses putting new emphasis on curves and less on more androgynous looks. Mariel Haenn, another stylist, points to the visibility of Kardashian, even on the cover of Vogue. “Someone with a voluptuous body wearing Givenchy like it was made for her shows that high fashion isn’t limited to one body type, and designers are taking note.”
Dr. Shirley Madhere, a plastic surgeon who practices in SoHo, can attest to an increased attention on the backside. “Across the board,” Madhere said, “regardless of age group and ethnicity, it’s that hourglass shape.” The difference is in the kind of hourglass her patients are looking for. Caucasian and Asians are seeking “a leaner, more athletic build,” she said, “while Latino and African-American patients want a little bit more projection - not too lean.” One way she achieves the illusion of an accentuated behind without a buttock implant is to perform liposuction on the surrounding area.
“You want it like you had when you were 16,” said Anna Kaiser, owner of the AKT in Motion fitness studio on the Upper East Side. Over the last five years, Kaiser said, her clientele has begun to focus on the gluteal muscles, and her lower-body videos are the ones most frequently purchased. The bottom “more than anything is something you can change with exercise,” she said. To combat the dread flatness, she recommends everything from leg lifts while on all fours to simply “squeezing your booty at the bus stop.”
BOTTOM UP
Erika Nicole Kendall, a writer and personal trainer, spends a lot of time explaining to women how to raise their rear. “I’ll say: ‘It will literally take you eight to 24 months. Are you ready?’ When I ask them what kind of imagery they have in mind, it’s usually somebody who has a large behind and small legs.”
The problem is that “there is an almost cartoonish expectation of having this tiny waist and oversized behind,” said Kendall, who wrote an article in Ebony last year about the dangers of trying to achieve the perfect behind. “Not only does it fail to make sense anatomically, but there are dangerous and deadly things people are doing to themselves,” she said, referring to injections and implants.
Myra Mendible, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, has written extensively about the cultural significance of the female buttocks. Historically, she said, “a woman’s failure to rein in an unruly butt connoted her lack of self-control, and by association, her inferior moral character. It also marked her place in the social order: ‘high class’ women did not carry excess baggage in the trunk.” But now the voluptuous backside is, she said, “a sign of authenticity.” And one that can help sell a range of products, she added, noting Dove and Nike marketing campaigns.
Look no further than the Instagram star Selter, who is hoping to parlay her famous bottom into workout plans and fitness videos. Cleavage, Selter maintains, can be transformed only through surgery. A full, pert behind, she said, “shows hard work.”
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