Baby Got Back

It wasn’t until third grade that I noticed I didn’t look like the other girls in my class. It was pointed out to me one recess as I was playing with my friends. I sang a song about my butt being swung around the playground, a friend said to me, “Trudi, your butt is big enough to be swung around the world.” As the other girls laughed at her quick come back and clever joke, I played it off and laughed as well, but I was dying inside. In my head, I thought we all looked the same, but we didn’t. Throughout the day I was teased about having a big butt and I hated it! Also, it didn’t help that my name rhymed with booty and the annoying song; “Trudi with the big booty” was made up by some asshole that stamped the mark on my insecurity even further.

I remember looking in the full-length mirror in my bedroom, getting a side profile of my body. I stared at my butt and tried to do things that would make it look smaller than it actually was. I’d put both hands on my rear end and push my pelvis forward, hoping that in some way that would flatten my plump behind. And when it was time for me to lay my clothes out for the following day I’d try to pick things that didn’t show my behind as much. Just the day before my butt wasn’t an issue and suddenly over night it was the biggest thing on my body and I wanted to get rid of it, maybe then my personal song sang at school wouldn’t apply.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore; I went in my mother’s room and told her what was said to me at school that day. I questioned why I didn’t look like the other girls; they didn’t have big butts and no one teased them about it. My mother listened intently, took me by my hand and led me to our living room where there was a stereo system with two huge speakers. After having asked her why she brought me to the living room she replied, “I need you to hear something.” “Baby, those girls are jealous because they don’t look like you. You’re a brick house baby!” A brick house? Wasn’t it enough that I wanted this big butt of mine to go away, now I’m being called a house? I could feel the lump in my throat and the tears about to well up in my eyes and then it came. The beat was so loud I almost covered my ears and the base vibrated through the living room. My mother started dancing, her hips swayed from side to side and her arms followed to the same rhythm. She moved in a way that made her butt pop out emulating the dancers in some of my favorite videos. Suddenly there was a loud whistle and I looked out of the window to my left to see if it were coming from outside, but it was the music. As mommy moved to her own beat, letting the music take over her body, she faced me smiling and the chorus started, “She’s a brick hooooouse. She’s mighty, mighty just lettin’ it all hang out.” I was relieved to know that a brick house wasn’t a bad thing, but what was it exactly? Mommy sang each line directly to me and she believed it so much that I started to believe it. She sang to me about a woman who is lusted after because of her body. And when I really started to pay attention to the words in this sing I didn’t understand everything, but what I did understand was that the men singing about this “brick house” woman, were losing their minds over her and I suddenly wanted to be like her. The Commodores described this woman as being stacked, a stallion who not only had the body, but the confidence to go along with it. I asked mommy if the woman in the song had a big butt like me and she said, “YES BABY! Bigger.” Well that was all I needed to hear because somewhere there was a woman who had a song made about her and she had a big butt like me!

The next day at school recess came and I waited for the little boys to tease me about my behind and like clock work they came. I stopped jumping rope with my friends, put my hand on my hip, looked them directly in the face, smiled, dusted my shoulder off the way mommy taught me the night before and said, “I may be Trudi with the big booty, but I’m a brick house too.” My friends laughed and cheered me on, “Oooooooooo, get um Trudi!” As I looked at the friend who exposed what I thought was my flaw just the day before, I replied to her cheering, “That was for you too.”