Jennica Wragg Supplemental Post #7 : "Booty" Comparing JLo's Performance and Iggy Azalea's

Following the discussion of the attention drawn to Jennifer Lopez’s backside that was popularized with her performance in Out of Sight and Selena in the late 1990’s I think it is very interesting to go back to this discussion following the release of her single and music video “Booty” in 2014. In the music video Jennifer’s face is disconnected from her body, we see in virtually every shot either just her butt or we see her face but the two are rarely depicted as connected. 

Her butt in this video is clearly commodified as an entity able to exist on its own and able to have a persona of its own. 

Opening Shot of the music Video, her butt is introduced before her face is

Disconnection apparent between her body and her face.

As we can tell from the reading it appears that her butt contributed more to her fame than her actual talent did in the early days of her career.  However, one interesting way in which the video it set up is it is almost an ode to her “booty” and functions as a way for her to reclaim the power of her butt and thus her Latina physicality as not something to be exploited, but rather something she proudly embraces. The fact that she performs this song at this point in her career is exceptionally interesting because it illustrates a sign of power that she is now able to take a part of her body that has been commodified and exploited particularly in the early days of her career and create a song that is almost a parody about this body part she was defined by for so long and thus she is able to exploit the cultural obsession with her butt for her own success which is quite remarkable.

            On the opposing side, the fact that Jennifer Lopez is able to make such a song about her butt successful almost 20 years after her initial rise to stardom is a rather sad reflection on society. Even after the decades of talented performances we have seen from he she still feels the need to detach her butt from her body marketing her butt as more of a selling point than her voice or her face.  Bringing Iggy Azalea into this is also a particularly interesting choice as Iggy has no connection to Latino culture but her music style is described as reflecting “a south American accent” even though she is a blonde woman from Australia and has no Latin American roots.  Thus the way Iggy’s performance draws attention to her butt I would argue is a form of cultural appropriation. 

For Jennifer she is reclaiming a body and a physique that has been associated with negative stereotypes and racial oppression however, Iggy only reinforces these negative stereotypes by her performance because she links her “south American style” directly with the need to showcase big butts. Thus Iggy’s performance not only illustrates the white fetishization with Latino bodies being only associated with big butts and a physique that is counter to Hollywood ideals, but also reduces Latin culture to an “exotic physicality” that is purely for consumption, exploitation, and appropriation.