There’s a great article by Elizabeth Enochs on Bustle, “ How America’s Ideal Butt Has Changed Over the Last Century .” She shows that the big round butt of today actually had a precursor in 1910 with the hourglass of the Gibson Girl, and the pin-ups of the ‘40s and ‘50s had curves for days. The no-butt years heralded by Twiggy in the ‘60s gave way to the aerobicized superfit butt that came into vogue with Jane Fonda and stayed until things blew up, as it were, with our big butt pop culture queens. Score one point for each “d” and each “False” answer you chose. If your score is over 5, your butt is ruining your life. But you knew that already. While factors such as personality, intelligence, education, and work experience are all important to a person’s self-esteem and prospects, these indicators are secondary compared to the importance of butt size. Even the most accomplished and beautiful among us can find herself trapped in a snake pit of self-loathing and madness if her butt is too big. And how do you know? When you end up in a department store dressing room with fluorescent lights and a three-way mirror and learn that a hideous alien life form is posing as one of your body parts? Fortunately, most of the time, your butt is in your head, and that is why psychologists have at last provided an assessment tool in this area. These days, the conversation has gotten quite a bit more complicated, as our devotion to ideal body aesthetics meets our more enlightened feminist attitudes. Cija called my attention to a 2017 storyline on Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It where a character—an aspiring dancer named Shemekka—has silicone implants in her rear. The episode where these implants exploded during a performance was supposed to be funny, but it drew sharp criticism from women writers on the internet as a severe example of mansplaining and body shaming. Thanks Twiggy

This century has been full of surprises for us baby boomers: Self-driving cars, portable phones that are smarter than we are, the ubiquity of hummus. But nothing has made my jaw drop further than the phenomenon of big butt worship. Sadly, the focus on having a perfect body, no matter how perfect is defined, is always going to mean some people are miserable.

Thanks Twiggy

Sadly, the focus on having a perfect body, no matter how perfect is defined, is always going to mean some people are miserable. I wish I could say that my demographic has aged out of this sort of thing, but that would be a big lie. Though I bet they see very few midlife women at the butt-injection clinic, it’s because they’re all over in line for Botox, collagen, and facelifts. I grew up hating my big fat butt, in fact, feeling humiliated by it. Oh sure, many other body parts were on my shit list as well, but only my thighs could really touch my butt (ha ha). I now know that girls of all shapes and sizes also felt this way, but I was bona fide chubby. I constantly compared my body to other people’s, whose cute little butts I could see a lot better than I could see mine. In fact, the only good thing about my butt was that I didn’t have to look at it. When I did, for example in a department store three-way mirror, I would feel a degree of self-loathing that eventually caused me to avoid department stores. And while some of my negative body consciousness lightened up around the time I became a mother, I still had enough rage against my butt in my 40s to come up with the Butt Assessment Test (see sidebar). While a written test like the BAT cannot determine the actual, i.e., “physical,” size of your butt, studies have shown that physical reality is less important than delusional projections when evaluating the effect of your rear on your daily life. So take a seat and let’s begin. Sentence Completion Section