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Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Racism and Rock: "Fat Bottomed Girls" Missing From Latest Compilation of Queen's Hits

In its article, "We will woke you! Classic Queen song Fat Bottomed Girls is mysteriously dropped from the group’s new Greatest Hits collection," the Daily Mail reports that the song "Fat Bottomed Girls (You Make the Rockin' World Go Round)" has been dropped from Queen's Greatest Hits collection being released by Universal Records on Yoto, a music platform aimed at younger children. As the article observes, "[i]t was such a popular hit for Queen that it appeared fourth on the band's original 1981 greatest hits album along with Bohemian Rhapsody, Don't Stop Me Now and We Will Rock You." Also:

    The move has left music industry insiders bemused, with bosses insisting that Fat Bottomed Girls has wrongly been singled out as it is 'merely a bit of fun'.

    One told The Mail on Sunday: 'It is the talk of the music industry, nobody can work out why such a good-natured, fun song can't be acceptable in today's society.

Chris Queen, writing at PJ Media, remarks:

Adding to the controversy is that there’s no clear explanation for why the song is missing. After all, “Fat Bottomed Girls” is a tribute to those ladies with a little junk in the trunk. What about body positivity? I thought we were supposed to celebrate the obese for being their true and brave selves.

He continues:

    Granted, this is an entertainment platform for kids, but it should be up to parents to determine whether their kids should listen to “Fat Bottomed Girls,” a song whose lyrics are likely to go over most kids’ heads. We conservatives believe that parents ought to have a hand in their kids’ education, and the same principle applies to their entertainment.

    Let’s also not forget that the wokes are the ones who rail against “book banning” while canceling or selectively editing all sorts of media. To throw leftists’ rhetoric right back in their faces, why is Yoto banning “Fat Bottomed Girls”?

    The left has shown us that it’s willing to throw away all sorts of aspects of our culture and history. It’s hard not to wonder what’s next and when it will all end.

While you might think that the age appropriateness of the song has something to do with it, other questionable Queen songs including "Another One Bites The Dust" (glorifying an active shooter), "Bohemian Rhapsody" (murder and invoking the devil), "Killer Queen" (high priced prostitute), "Bicycle Race" (specific reference to cocaine), "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" (gay sex), and others with sexual or drug references made the cut.

    The disconnect here, that critics do not understand but of which Universal Records seems to be aware, is that appreciating "fat bottomed girls" is racist: specifically, because having a large butt is associated with POC generally, and black women in particular, it is racist for white men to express appreciation of women with large butts, and it is cultural appropriation for white women to show off big butts in a sexualized way. (In fact, when it comes to large breasts versus large butts, white men generally prefer large breasts; whereas POC men tend to prefer large butts). The video from Black Pigeon Speaks, below, tries to explain why big butts is a race issue (warning--the video has many stock clips of women dancing in skimpy clothing, so it probably is NSFW):

Black Pigeon Speaks (11 min.)

2 comments:

  1. Hmmm. What about the Sir Mix-a-lot song called "Baby Got Back?" You know the one with the opening line "I like big butts and I cannot lie!"

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