Archive for September 14th, 2006

Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman) is probably one of the more important songs in my life, in the sense that it’s been around for a long time, and at very different stages. I was first aware of the song back in the 70’s when it came out. I was very little, but I know I remember the song, not stories about me and the song. I got reacquainted with it in the early 90’s, towards the end of high school, when I started flipping through those old 45’s. It was Ain’t Gonna Bump and Soulfinger that started me on the road to the funk. Now, I’ve seen the video. I linked to it a couple weeks ago, but looking at it again made me think of a couple things.Not to spoil the fun, but at the end of this Soul Train performance, Joe Tex actually does bump with a big fat woman. Only thing is, she’s really not all that big and fat. Not by 2006 standards, at least. Don’t get it twisted, she ain’t a size 10 under no circumstances, but she’s not as big as I imagined in my mind. There are a couple of possibilities in this. Number one is that as our society has gotten larger, our perspective has widened, so to speak, so what was really big in 1976 is just slightly above average in 2006. Cuz on the real, childhood obesity is no joke. Either my memory deceives me or the fat kids when I was growing up weren’t nearly as big as the fat kids now.

The other possibility is that they weren’t gonna really put a big ole-big ole fat woman on the Soul Train. Maybe whey were willing to put a plump jawn up there, but even the big ole woman knocking Joe Tex down couldn’t be but so big.

If that’s the case, and I suspect that that has something to do with it, it’s really interesting that our standards of beauty seem to be headed in the opposite direction as our real-life shapes. In other words, the “ideal” figure (and of course I’m talkin about women here) is probably smaller today than it was 30 years ago. However, the average woman is actually bigger. I’m sure y’all know that the sizes on women’s clothes aren’t exactly standardized. Who knows what a size six really is? Whatever it is today, it’s bigger than it was back in Joe Tex’s day. I would think that the standards of beauty would change in the direction that the people change, or at least that they wouldn’t be going in opposite directions.

jacked from Parablemania

Every once in a while, something comes along that just flat-out surprises me. This most recent surprise comes courtesy of the fact that there seem to be a whole lot of people who think Eli Whitney was Black.  Frankly, I don’t understand how anybody could have that misconception.  Or maybe put a little milder, I never thought he was.  Number one, I just never thought he was from the get-go, but if I went so far as to think about it logically, there’s no way the inventor of the cotton gin would have been Black.  Not because a Black man couldn’t or wouldn’t have thought of it, but because at that time in American history, what Black man would get credit for having invented anything?

Did anybody else think Eli Whitney was Black?