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This article puts to mind the story of the Hottentot Venus:
"Saarjite Baartman, a young Khosian woman from Southern Africa whose body was the main attraction at public spectacles in both England and France for over five years, is perhaps the most infamous case of a Khosian body on display. Baartman, who became known as the Hottentot Venus, was brought to Europe from Cape Town in 1810 by an English ship's surgeon who wished to publicly exhibit the woman's steatopygia, her enlarged buttocks. Her physique, particularly her steatopygic appendage, became the object of popular fascination when Baartman was exhibited naked in a cage at Piccadilly, England. When abolitionists mobilized to put an end Baartman's public display, she informed them that she participated in the spectacles of her own volition. She even shared in profits with her exhibitor."
Rather than comment on all the ways that the author fails to situate the big booty phenomenon in any sort of historical, medical, anthropological or even extra-cultural context, I'll just refer you to the rest of this article:
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Exhibition.html)
