Clappery
Sir please understand….I’m not a video vixen. I do understand that I am one of millions who possess the tenth wonder of the world…a big butt.
I can remember being 10 years old, my mother and grandmother coordinated their efforts and purchased me my first long line girdle. It came from Peggy's. It was black. I can still see it folded in that shiny thin brown paper bag. I was confused as to why. I thought this was something that only women wore. On Sundays, I saw my mother and grandmother transform they bodies into to effortless silhouettes. The foundations of this old school “snatched” as we call it today were a long line brazier, long line girdle, two large safety pins and a long line slip. The brazier straps left permanent scars and indents on my mother and grandmother’s shoulders. To put this brazier on… let me use the shorten term for those who aren’t following me. To put this bra on, you have to understand the dynamics of this piece of garment. The bra was long enough to cover your back. It would graze the top of your hips. The bra reminded me of a straight jacket kind of. You would put this on, then connect about 20 hooks in the front. You then made sure your breasts were in the right compartments. I swear my mama and granny breasts looked like armed torpedoes. After putting on hosiery, the girdle was next. It sometimes took two people to help get the girdle up. Pins were used to secure the girdle and bra on the sides. The get up was adorned by a slip.
I wanted to know why I had to get a girdle. The response was so that you wouldn’t look “slack.” The fact of the matter is at a young age my hips were that of a grown woman. My butt had a mind of its own. My granny would say, “Dollie ya boonkey is move so.” Pure Clappery at age 10. The way my butt moved , it was if I had my own theme music. It took time to get adjusted to wearing a girdle. In my mind, it was only appropriate to wear when I wore a skirt or dress. My grandmother wanted me to wear it every day. She wanted me to wear it when I wore dungarees. I remember one time wearing them under my jeans, and having to explain to someone what the bends and creases were in my jeans. It was the crease showing where the girdle ended. I lied. I told her I wore bicycle pants under my jeans. She wanted to know why I did that? Girl bye. Mama told me I didn’t have to wear my girdle under pants, but I knew when it came to skirts and dresses I had to wear that damn girdle. The girdle was introduced to me at a young age to shape my body. I don’t know how, I was shapely at a young age. The girdle trained my body to fall in place, where the laws of gravity were denied.
What I disliked about that girdle was the fact that it was hot in the summertime and it was extra clothes I had to take off when it was time to go to the bathroom. For longevity, my girdle never saw the insides of a dryer. That girdle had to keep my composure intact. Even with the girdle doing its job, the one think it could not disseminate was the eyes and imagination of a man. I remember being around 12 years old walking down King Street with my grandmother. We were enroute to Edward's Nickel and Dime store to get those chicken wings and fries. I had an admirer. I remember having on a jeans skirt walking a head of my granny. I was so free until I was fool. I can distinctly hear my grandmother who has been deceased for over twenty years say, “When ya get done, dat’s a twelve year old child who boonkey ya lookin at ya! Mine fa ya ass go da jail!” I don’t know who was embarrassed more, me or him.
As I got older, I was delightful I didn’t develop large breasts like other females in my family. Lord knows having double D breasts and a large butt was an invitation to being a whore in someone’s eyes. Sad but the truth, women who are curvaceous in these days and times are cherished on a different level than the average chick. With the likes of reality television shows in which women don’t get noticed unless their breasts can stand attention on first command, their waist is about the size of their neck side or smaller and their buttocks looks like a perfect Georgia peach spray painted life size on the side of an abandoned building. For the very thing that my maternal guardians tried to conceal, women are paying thousands of dollars to get. I can recall an article about K. Michelle having to have surgery to remove her butt implants because of the pain she was having. She stated that her legs could not support her butt. As a result she was having Lupus like symptoms. She was scheduled to have surgery this month, I pray healing virtue to you my sister.
Here it is over 30 years later, a few years ago the Lord heard and answered the prayers of us curvaceous women and placed it on someone’s heart to create Spanx. I swear if it was possible to shout in the middle of this sentence and let you see I would. In the words of Toni Braxton, I can breathe again! Spanx doesn’t make you lose weight. It minimizes the clappery action when your walking and it creates a smooth silhouette.
If I never learned anything with the men that I have dated, they could give a damn about girdles. In fact, we as women beat up ourselves over looks. When the average guy is extremely satisfied with what he sees. I have plenty of male friends, because I’m cool like that. I never crossed the line, never will. There are guys who are on this earth that I am have profound relationships with that are more in-depth that my Burns/Baldwin lineage. I appreciate them for our levels of communication and heart to heart talks. I swear we tell each other trade secrets of the opposite sex. I was told a time or two that a man can determine a woman’s shape by looking at her. To further explain, a dude saw a picture of me and said, “ I could tell you had an ass from the front.” Then another dude told me out right, “ you can lose anything, but please don’t lose that backside.” I questioned what would happen. He said he would leave. Well he never made it past the preliminary stages.
There are men who study the physicalities of a female. Big Beautiful Women or BBW are really being recognized these days. I never had a problem attracting the opposite sex, but now…Hunty…BBWs are taking over. That same fat chick that got also sorts of curve balls in high school is now desired by many. What made this happen? Reality television shows? More confident women? I don’t know…I don’t care. But please hear me when I say that we are more than the dimensions of our bodies. Yesssssss….I have a waist that’s smaller than my hips. But I also have conversation and I am highly intelligent. No I’m not going to not get to know you and begin a sexual relationship with you to possibly live out a scene in your favorite rapper's video. No, I am not the only chick with a big butt. There is no way for me to hide this. Therefore I will not. There will be some days when I want to wear some tight jeans, a fitting dress or a short skirt. On those days, I give you permission to look, but please don’t yell out a “Goooo-red!”, a “Gewd Gawd”, or a “Goddamn!”. Some women like that attention, some do not. Use your inside voices if possible or go old school and hit us with a, “ You are one bad woman” line. That way I can give thanks and walk off to my personal theme music in my head. Make your approach respectful and you get a good response when approaching a woman. Don’t get mad if your disrespectful is matched. No we’re not stuck up, we just want a different approach because we’re not that chick. I can’t speak for all, I’m speaking for me.
If it was possible, women with big butts, should have a label across our backsides saying, “ please handle with extreme caution, beware of clappery.”
Terrie L.” AuthenticGeechieGurl” Burns
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