Ice T’s wife Coco Austin is getting skewered on social media for saying that she cleared the way for thick girls to be accepted and celebrated. She also said curvaceous women were considered overweight before she hit the scene.
“I helped pave the way for thick girls during the skinny genre, during the Kate Moss days what they call the waif era, to be noticed as beautiful,” she wrote. “This was back before social media when magazines were popping. Back before Kim [Kardashian], Nicki Minaj … This was also back before the plastic surgery craze …. During my time, it was pretty much J. Lo that was making waves with the derriere phenomenon and Cindy Margolis was a popular bikini model and Buffie the Body was a popular urban model and of course I need to give props to Anna Nicole Smith for also seeing this vision.”
“To have booty, it was considered to be fat in the modeling world,” Austin continued. “But I helped change the minds of what booty was.Today it’s a normal thing to see all different shapes and sizes, no one even thinks about it anymore. I helped history in someway.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd8Y_IHFa8r/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_legacy
Afterwards, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of social media comments that blasted the 38-year-old, namely because she dismissed so many others and only referenced two women of color in Buffy the Body and Jennifer Lopez. She also received heavy criticism for suggesting that curvaceousness wasn’t cool until white women like herself and Cindy Margolis arrived.
“How a white girl gonna act like she started the big booty trend,” one person tweeted.
“I normally like her, but she’s reaching,” someone else wrote. “We’ve been thick and been had it going on way before Ice pimped her out. We didn’t need mainstream to validate us.”
Another person who took offense to Austin’s claims was “Flavor of Love’s” Deelishis, who said there were a number of Black female models who made curvy figures more accepted.
“Paved the way? Never,” she said on TMZ. “I did see that she did shout out Buffy the Body … But I think she got it all wrong when she made that caption. I think she needs to go back, reread it, rethink it and re-post.”
“I don’t necessarily want to make it a Black and white thing but it is what it is,” Deelishis added. “That happens a lot of times to African American women. A lot of the things that we do are overshadowed by the other race. It happens like that all the time, and they are given credit for it, they take the credit, they accept the credit and we keep it moving.”
Deelishis also stated that she grew to popularity on VH1’s “The Flavor of Love” in 2006, around the time that curvaceous women were being seen on television more, thus, making her more influential than Austin. She pointed to other Black models who made an impact too like Melissa Ford, Esther Baxter and Ki Toy Johnson.
“There are so many of us who put the shine in super thick and it was not Coco,” said Deelishis.
Deelishis isn’t the first to talk about Black women not getting credit for popularizing curvaceousness. A few years ago Vogue got roasted for giving people like Iggy Azalea, Miley Cyrus and internet celeb Jen Selter credit for making larger backsides more accepted.
In fact, Vanity Fair did the same thing and when editors used a photo of Selter instead of a Black woman to celebrate the derriere craze, a lot of folks took offense.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ldlmZLGkey/
In the past, some have said the mainstream media loves Black features but not necessarily on Black people. On Tuesday (Jan. 16), Deelishis addressed that same double standard when she blasted the decision makers at Instagram for flagging one of her semi-risqué photos. In her post, she said the company picks and chooses whose images they’ll reject, and she feels it has plenty to do with race.
“This violates your community but you happily float the entire Kardashian family’s naked asses around the IG community all year around,” she wrote. “You are either bias, racist or blind. I’ve witnessed you do this to so many African American public figures.”
Coco has yet to respond to Deelishis but you can see some of the reactions to Coco’s claims below.
https://twitter.com/Ay_fiddy/status/952835819085205504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhiphopwired.com%2F741619%2Fcoco-austin-ripped-to-tiny-alabaster-shreds-for-claiming-she-pioneered-big-booty-craze%2F4%2F
I normally like her, but she’s reaching. We’ve been thick and been had it going on, way before Ice pimped her out. We didn’t need mainstream to validate us.
— 𝓑𝓸𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓪 𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓫𝓾𝓶 💋 (@TygerLeone) January 16, 2018
Actually it was black women who had big butts and were made fun of because of it. Look up Sarah Baartman, a black woman with a huge butt, born in 1789! So stop trying to take credit! Black woman had natural big butts
— Lynn Scott (@BigDreamer84) January 15, 2018
Delusions of grandeur
— Melissa Mcbride (@melliemelnow) January 15, 2018
So you are the first white girl to copy a black woman’s body…yay for you. We’ve had them all along.
— queen (@tblackqueen) January 16, 2018
nah, Anna did that for the white girls. And we had like Melissa ford, ester baxter, Buffy the body etc pic.twitter.com/8okJbZtyCG
— Serena (@Makeup_Serena) January 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/yvonnevictoriaa/status/952929807909744640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhiphopwired.com%2F741619%2Fcoco-austin-ripped-to-tiny-alabaster-shreds-for-claiming-she-pioneered-big-booty-craze%2F
Smh…. the butt movement was around long b4 coco
— Monica McDaniel (@LadyShiloh) January 15, 2018
Coco did not just take credit for the popularity of thick models. She out of her rabid ass mind.
— She Too Old 4 That? (@just_flyd) January 15, 2018
