Sara Baartman

Today in class, we viewed a documentary about a woman by the name of Sara Baartman. She belonged to a tribe called Khoi-Khoi in Captown in South Africa. In this documentary, it basically talked about how she was exhibited in Europe and France. People thought of her as a monster, non-human, and they even called her a noble savage. She was being poked at and talked about being exhibited by some who never saw such a woman that was different physically. She had large breast, a big nose, full lips, and a large buttocks. Even the images they showed, the artworks of her, were very exaggerating. I didn't like the way these Europeans exploited her and how they portrayed her as. They treated her as a freak show. At one point, she had a choice to stay or go home. If she was to go home, it was said she would either be enslaved or ending up dead. In my opinion, I think she was bribed to stay because in the documentary it said something about she was feeling ill and this man wanted her to dance. She didn't feel like doing it, but she did it anyway. I believed she probably didn't want to do either one because in her hometown they were enslaving people and she may have died, but where she was, in Europe, she was being exploited and treated like an animal, in my opinion, even though she was given money. What really made me a little disturbed was when she died, people weren't really interested in the cause of her death, but rather dissecting her body to see was she really human or not. Also, in the documentary they said her genitals and her brain were even still displayed, but however, her genitals ended up missing and is still missing to this day. What are they doing with it and why would they take this? I do not know why a person would do this. Her body really resembled a lot of black women today. A lot of them have the full lips, the big nose, large breast, the wide hips, and the big buttocks. Sara Baartman was beautiful to me and her body, which made many men crave her, is what we see today in many black women, which is often complimented on and desired.