Earlier this week Blake Lively received backlash on social media after she posted a photo of herself in a Versace gown with the caption, ‘An L.A. Face with an Oakland Booty’, quoting a line from Sir Mix-a-lot’s 1992 hit ‘Baby Got Back’. Some accused the actress of being racially insensitive by quoting the lyric, but songwriter Sir Mix-a-lot has come to Lively’s defence.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the rapper noted that the line has previously been used by Katy Perry and Khloe Kardashian on social media, without causing the same uproar. ‘A friend of mine, he said, “Dude, I know Katy Perry did this, one of the Kardashians did this, but I don’t understand, what did this girl do to make everybody pissed off”’ he began.
‘So I checked it out, and looked at it and I was kind of … I liked it. You know, I like stuff like that, but I was a little surprised at the criticism. Let’s rewind to when I wrote the song…The reason I wrote the song was because I always felt that the African-American idea of what was beautiful was shunned.’
More: Blake Lively Accused Of Racism After ‘L.A. Face, Oakland Booty’ Instagram Post
‘At the same time, what was promoted as beautiful was kind of really waif-thin, borderline heroin addicts. I don’t mean that literally, I mean the look. That was kind of pushed at us, and we were told that it was beautiful, and what I started to see was some people of color either being ashamed of who they were or trying their best to assimilate.’
‘So I wrote “Baby Got Back,” not to say which race is prettier — which is silly, because there were white women with the same curves that were told that they were fat, too…I wrote this song not as a battle between the races. I wrote the song because I wanted Cosmopolitan, I wanted all these big magazines to kind of open up a little bit and say, “Wait a minute, this may not be the only beautiful.”’
Directly referencing the recent drama with Lively, Sir Mix-a-lot added: ‘Fast-forward to Blake Lively. For her to look at her butt and that little waist and to say “L.A. face with an Oakland booty,” doesn’t that mean that the norm has changed, that the beautiful people have accepted our idea of beautiful? That’s the way I took it.’
‘I think we have to be careful what we wish for as African-Americans, because if you say she doesn’t have the right to say that, then how do you expect her at the same time to embrace your beauty?’.
More: Blake Lively Channels ‘Frozen’ Princess In Breathtaking Versace Gown
‘I mean, I don’t get it. I think it’s almost a nod of approval, and that was what I wanted. I wanted our idea of beautiful to be accepted. I think now not only is it accepted, but it’s expected.’
‘That song was written with African-American women in mind, but trust me when I tell you that there are women out there with those curves everywhere, and they were once considered fat,’ he concluded. ‘And that’s what the song was about. It wasn’t about some race battle.’
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