I've also read she was the inspiration for the bustle skirt. White ladies always wanted the butt.

This woman did not do squats to achieve this! LOLLLL... Google her plastic surgeries. First one at 15? Le sigh. This is Kardashian-level silicone for minor celebrity status. Again. She is not any kind of professional fitness anything. gah.

"Remember when women started breaking down the doors of dermatology offices across America to get lip injections so they could emulate Angelina Jolie–ya know, the first beautiful woman on earth with thick lips?"

Yes. They treated her like a circus act (in fact they captured her and put in her in the circus as an oddity and a representation of the 'female savage'). Her captors/Europeans believed her ample backside and that of her fellow female counterparts was indicative of the savage women's verility and oversexed women that…

Thank you for this article. You articulated this phenomenon perfectly. Sincerely, Puerto Rican woman with a big ass that was mocked my whole life by white people.

"All this is is some Christoper Columbus shit: White people thinking that simply because they just discovered something, it must be new."

Remember when white women ruined the use of the word "sister".

POOR WHITE PEOPLE!

WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE POOR WHITE WOMEN!!!!!!

Whatever. I'm an educated woman that very much enjoys watching Single Ladies. Deal With It.

LIES Hilary! LIES! I watch it. I don't love it, but I am entertained enough to keep watching. I won't miss it if it's gone though.

Are we white yet?

There is no aspect of the story that is not heartbreaking: this woman epitomizes how difficult it is to claw your way out of crippling poverty and the many "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choices one has to make in doing so. Her children were in real danger. Very real, very serious danger, and that should not…

They gave themselves a PG-13 rating.

This is such a big deal. For a black woman — a dark-skinned woman — to get a BEAUTY campaign. Very exciting.

Wow - this is mind-blowing - I knew about the bullshit with the celebrity magazines but had given zero thought to the problems encountered by real people. Thanks for continuing to educate.

It seems like a perfect example of one of those things that it's possible to be totally, blissfully ignorant of when you're not a person with dark skin.

are we assuming he's from a low-income family....

behind-the-scenes

Hi folks! I'm glad you get my point, but I don't think publishing a book on Mammy nearly one hundred years later is progress. To me, it's reviving an old stereotype and trying to dress it in new, contemporary less-offensive clothes to make money.