The Year the Ass Took Over

Nicki Minaj started it, or at least kicked the current cycle into gear—Anaconda, a jungle, a banana, Billboard charts doing things that are technically legal in most states. Then Jennifer Lopez showed up with Booty to confirm that this wasn’t just one woman’s statement. She’s 45, mother of two, still fighting whatever version of the Madonna Syndrome tells you that stopping is a kind of death.

The video pairs her with Iggy Azalea, and the whole thing is essentially a slow-motion competition: whose body makes the camera forget there’s a face attached. I interviewed Iggy on this journal a while back—the headline involved the words "small breasts" and "nice ass," which tells you exactly what the register was—and she always struck me as someone who’d made her peace with the transaction long before the mainstream caught up with her. Now she’s in a Jennifer Lopez video, both of them grinding for the ages, and the discourse is exactly as high-minded as you’d expect.

2014 is a very good year if you appreciate large posteriors and have no objection to a 45-year-old woman demanding your full attention. I do, and I don’t. Yeah.