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Read other letters about this article
The Hollywood stars have nearly always been impossibly glamorous but the focus of pulchritudinous perfection is no longer located in Hollywood alone. I think there are tee-vee programmes about "America's Next Super-Model" and I've seen one on this side of the world called "How to look good naked" where a fella called Gok Wan has the freedom to touch women's bodies, gush about their potential to look like Aphrodite rising from the sea, put on a show of false sincerity and ritual humiliation while these women acquiesce to his commands.
It's pathetic and also very unpleasant when it rebounds on young girls, as cyber-bullying involving accusations of "fat" has become a 21st century phenomenon. Your African-American friend may not have seen anyone on the screen who looked like her but in that she's not unique.
I don't live in a hierarchical society and find the fawning of the British press about its royal family amusing but their Queen's rump has never been subjected to any kind of scrutiny, favourable or otherwise. Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the UK and, even though she was the target of much jeering in satirical magazines and on a very funny "Spitting Image" puppet show, her nether regions were very much her own; that's probably why they're called "private parts". Elizabeth 11 and Thatcher are also wives, mothers and grannies.
Ms. Kaplan's article is totally lacking in discretion but maybe that's OK too. It's also based on a false premise. There are plenty of white backsides that jiggle. As the buttocks are composed of muscle and a lot of fat, junk food and gluttony contribute to the maximus of the gluteus just as hormone-enhanced meat has led to women having bigger feet than those of earlier generations. It's not all bad news, all the same. as it seems that the wooly mammoth may be roaming the earth any time soon. I have no idea what Ms. Kaplan meant to achieve by concentrating on Michelle Obama's bottom but the reaction is as angry as a "spanked bottom", although that must have its compnsations if she's going to get her 15 minutes of fame on radio stations. Anyway I don't really care. Barack Obama's election was hailed in Europe as the moment of healing in the racial divisions of the US but that seems to be wishful thinking, considering the tenor of Kaplan's article which particularises a body part usually kept under wraps. I suppose my interpretation is facile and, as the proverb goes, "It's easy to sleep on another man's wound". It's late here and there is much more to grizzle about than an essay on a woman's haunches, no matter how important or insignificant she might be.
