Blake Lively set off a major debate when she posted a front-and-back shot of herself to Instagram with the caption, “L.A. face with an Oakland booty” this week. On one side were people who thought that it was racially insensitive, and on the other were people who thought that quoting the song lyric from Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” was more an homage than an insult.
Now the man behind the 1992 hit has weighed in himself, and he’s looking at the issue not as one only about race, but as being about a positive change in the standards of beauty.
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“So I checked it out, and looked at it and I was kind of … I liked it. You know, I like stuff like that, but I was a little surprised at the criticism,” he explained to Hollywood Reporter.
In the extended quote, he contextualizes the song in the era it came out in, explaining that he was inspired to write it because he felt “the African American idea of what was beautiful was shunned.”
He also defines what he meant by the quoted lyric, explaining, “What I meant by ‘L.A.’ was Hollywood. In other words, makeup or whatever it took to make that face look good, they do it in L.A. But, as much as you can throw makeup on something, you can’t make up the butt. That’s what L.A. face and Oakland booty meant. You can put makeup on that face and make it look beautiful, but a butt is a butt, a body is a body.”
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But now he sees Lively’s use of the line as a representation of things changing for the better. “For her to look at her butt and that little waist and to say ‘L.A. face with an Oakland booty,’ doesn’t that mean that the norm has changed, that the beautiful people have accepted our idea of beautiful? That’s the way I took it,” he said, continuing, “If what Blake Lively meant by that comment was, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve gained weight, I look horrible,’ if that’s what she meant — and I doubt that she did — then I’m with the critics. But no one in the world is gonna tell me that a woman that wears that dress is thinking that she’s fat. No, I’m sorry, it just doesn’t happen. It sounds like to me like she was giving the line props.”
Mix-A-Lot also explained that he felt people should think twice before criticizing the quote. “I think we have to be careful what we wish for as African Americans, because if you say she doesn’t have the right to say that, then how do you expect her at the same time to embrace your beauty? I mean, I don’t get it. I think it’s almost a nod of approval, and that was what I wanted. I wanted our idea of beautiful to be accepted. I think now not only is it accepted, but it’s expected.”
