By now, we have all seen the photos from reality star Kim Kardashian’s nude photo shoot with Paper magazine. Here’s what’s wrong with Mrs. Kardashian West’s pictures.
It’s the ‘Butt’ of an Ongoing Racist Joke
The series of photos is, in fact, a recreation of photographer Jean-Paul Goude’s 1976 photo “Carolina Beaumont” also known as the “Champagne Incident.” The original photo shows a naked, smiling Black woman, balancing a champagne glass on her butt in a half-squatting position.
The photo was part of a larger photo book titled “Jungle Fever,” that fetishized Black women and sometimes made their bodies appear animalistic. Goude had a sort of obsession with Black women, which perpetuated the ideals that Black women’s bodies were objects. Author of “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture,” Janell Hobson notes that in one part of “Jungle Fever,” Goude compares the backsides of Black women to those of “race horses.”
