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It’s a fair guess that Blake Lively probably didn’t mean to cause any offense with the caption she used on a photo posted to Instagram this week.
The Café Society star uploaded a side-by-side image of herself on the Cannes red carpet in a figure-hugging nude gown, one shot of herself from the front, the other from behind. She captioned the image: “L.A face with an Oakland booty”.
Blake probably just has some fond memories of shaking her butt to the 1992 track Baby Got Back by Sir-Mix-a-Lot, and might not realise that the song has racial connotations. It was released as an ode to black women to empower them at a time when Hollywood and the American media featured primarily white faces.
Sir-Mix-a-Lot himself explained this to the Huffington Post in 2014:
“The black, female body was not accepted as the norm anywhere. For years, all you saw on television was overweight black maids or black women who would assimilate to white culture, as far as the look is concerned. I wanted to do something that was tongue-in-cheek but, at the same time, making a real point.”
Twitter user Kat Bee summed up the problem with Blake, a white woman, using the line to describe herself:
“Another day, another rich white woman using WOC’s [women of colour’s] bodies as a punchline and commodity.”
Others didn’t see an issue with Lively using the line, with one user commenting on Instagram.
“She meant it in an upbeat and funny way. People [are] always digging up unnecessary meanings to every single thing someone says.”
Lively, who is expecting her second child with husband Ryan Reynolds, raise their daughter James out of the public eye in upstate and New York and rarely court attention except when they have a project to promote (which they are obligated to do). So it seems unlikely that any offence the actress has caused was intentional.
Blake has yet to comment on the furor and hasn’t removed the post.
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