Thread by @AfricanArchives

Sarah Saartjie Baartman from South Africa was cruelly exploited in Europe by being exhibited as a freak show attraction because of her protruding butt.

After her death, her body was displayed in a Paris museum for over a 100 years.

THREAD!

SARAH "Saarjte" Baartman of the khoikhoi people of South Africa was born in 1789 and was one of 2 women put on display as a "FREAK SHOW" act in England and then later France.

The men who promised her a life of pride in sharing her culture with the World tricked her, and though she was given pay she often was at the expense of verbal, sexual, and physical abuse.

You see the HOTTENTOT VENUS (Hottentot is very derogatory) had a very distinct look, because the women of her people had extremely large buttocks, and an abnormally elongated labia.

Nude photos of khoikhoi women with steatopygia were collected by white colonialists. Steatopygia is the accumulation of large amounts of fat on the buttocks, especially as a normal condition in the Khoikhoi of Southern Africa.

She was made to wear a coloured skin tight outfit revealing what was to be a naked black woman for the paying public to inspect, view, and allegedly at times for extra coin... have a "Private Showing".

When sold to another manager, she was taken to France where she was forced to perform at private parties in homes of the most affluent and wealthy, with the final act being an invitation to the party attendees to approach, touch, feel, and inspect a laid down SARAH'S GENITALS

She was to be later handed off to medical professionals who drew the details of her body. She died penniless from diseases in Paris, as a sex slave in 1815.
Her body had a molded cast made, her brain & pelvic bone put in PRESERVING JARS with her flesh & corpse being discarded.

Her remains were finally reclaimed by South Africa, and was given a ceremonial burial in 2002 (187 years later after her death). SARAH never saw her homeland again... Only parts of her body in death.