By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
July 14, 1992
WHITE GIRL: “Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt. It is so big.
She looks like one of those rap guys’ girlfriends.
But, you know, who understands those rap guys?”
– Intro to “Baby Got Back,” by Sir Mix-A-Lot
Butts are big.
When the No. 1-selling pop single in America features a rapper rhapsodizing about rumps, the rest of the world sits up and takes notice. Many people take offense.
That’s the case with Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” But even he doesn’t understand the controversy.
“I don’t see what the big deal is about butts,” he says. “Everyone’s got one – men, women, dogs – everyone.”
Yeah, but most people don’t have 20-foot-high, 15-foot-wide blow-up butts like those Mix-A-Lot features in his controversial video for “Baby Got Back,” a video MTV has banished to the late evening hours.
“The point of my song is that women should not have to conform to standards set by fashion magazines or try to live up to men’s ideals,” the nouveau rapper says. “This song has so many people confused. Some think it’s making fun of fat women, some think I’m being racist (against white women) and some think I’m just a pig for writing about women’s butts. The people who’ve complained (to me) the most are these so-called liberal males who think they know what a woman wants, which to me is more sexist than anything I could possibly come up with.
“Women have been conditioned over the years that little box-shaped butts are beautiful and that they should try to get rid of curves that make them look feminine. I’m saying the choice is theirs to make. If a woman wants to be thin, good for her. But if a woman is sick of trying to get a shape she was never meant to have, let her relax. . . . Men like curves.”
Got that?
The flap surrounding “Baby Got Back” has more to do with the accompanying video than lyrical content, where Mix-A-Lot (Anthony Ray of Seattle) refers to derrieres of the female sort no less than 39 times as “back,” “butt,” “round thang,” “buns,” “rump,” “bubble” – you get the picture. (Ironically, for a song that celebrates a woman’s right to fullness, the majority of women in the video are lithe dancers. The largest human butt in the video belongs not to them, but to Sir Mix-A-Lot.)
Here’s how hot the video is: For weeks, it received the most requests and the most complaints on MTV.
“We moved Sir Mix-A-Lot’s video to after 9 p.m. because we received a tremendous amount of complaints about the context of the video,” says Carole Robinson, an MTV spokeswoman. “We believe in the artists’ right to do what they want to do creatively, but our audience should always be the biggest factor with what we do with our programming.”
Just who’s complaining is the question. It’s not the National Organization for Women, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the Parents Music Resource Center (with whom we checked). And Robinson says parents didn’t account for the majority of complaints.
Sir Mix-A-Lot’s video is less suggestive than others that have garnered heavy rotation on MTV. Marky Mark, Chris Isaak and a seminude Madonna all frolicked with topless models. But they didn’t sing about body parts. They just groped at them. In “Baby Got Back,” no woman is naked or grabbed at. (The original version did depict Mix-A-Lot simulating sex with one of the inflated butts, but it was edited out for MTV’s censors. Starting today, the unedited version is available on Warner/ Reprise Home Video for $9.98.)
“It’s kind of funny that I probably wouldn’t have had a problem if I rapped about sex or beating someone up,” Mix-A-Lot says. “But because my song is about a body part, it makes a lot of people nervous. I just don’t get it.”
Mix-A-Lot Cancels Club Tour
Sir Mix-A-Lot has canceled the remainder of his club tour, including a gig this Thursday at the Avalon Niteclub, saying he wants to take his 17-member entourage to larger venues. The inflatable butts, however, are out on their own tour, adorning music stores’ roofs – and occasionally attracting detractors. At one stop, vandals shot the balloon with arrows and deflated it. No Chicago stop for the balloon has been confirmed, but the butts have gone Hollywood. They’ll make an appearance in Michael Douglas’ upcoming film, “Falling Down.”
