Becoming a Woman With a Scandalous Body - Zainab Jah plays Sarah Baartman, the Venus Hottentot
The Hottentot Venus was real, but at the same time, she wasn't. That was the persona created for Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman, a black South African woman who was displayed in British freak shows during the early nineteenth century. She was showcased because of her large buttocks, which white Europeans deemed shocking and exotic, and she eventually achieved a cruel kind of fame. By the time she died, she lived in France…