Martin Sonenberg
Sarah
Behold, in one room, a two-horned rhinoceros
brought, to satisfy your scientific interest,
from the depths of the jungle. In another,
adjacent, for your delectation, and
for three days only,
displayed in her natural habitat
of mud and straw for scrutiny
of assembled professors
of zoology and physiology -
students of Daubenton and Buffon -
in all her strange beauty,
the Venus of an alien culture.
This same exhibit presents an
exceedingly curious morphological feature:
namely the enormous size of
her buttocks. Let us not insist on something
so easily verified by observation.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire explains
this steatopygia as being of pathological origin,
a menstrual dysfunction seen also
in female orang-utans.
Were it not for the cogency
of his comparisons with the higher primates,
we might almost think,
on studying her muzzle,
and a certain glint in her eyes,
that she understands every word we say.
 |
Note: Sarah Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus, was brought from the Cape in the early 19th Century, after signing a contract with a showman to exhibit her in Europe. She was fluent in five languages.
Page(s) 47-48
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