Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman: Biography, all you need to know
Sarah Baartman was originally named Saartjie and referred to as Hottentot Venus.
She was a late 18th-century individual from the Eastern Cape (present-day South Africa), who was exploited as a spectacle to entertain white masters throughout Europe.
Sarah endured steatopygia, resulting in excess fatty tissue around her hips and posterior. She was hypersexualized and ridiculed and symbolizes a grim period in black history. Many still connect it with the objectification and hyper-sexualization of voluptuous black women by white individuals.
In the 1770s, Saartjie was born in the Camdeboo valley in the eastern region of the Cape Colony, now South Africa. Following her birth, her family relocated to Gamtoos Valley.
As she matured, she experienced steatopygia, which caused her to have pronou...