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Recently in Salon Travel

Travel Advisor
Off-season Europe
Our travel expert gets readers to the heart of autumn Europe, finds the perfect Fallingwater stay and directs scuba divers to some great spots outside the United States.
By Donald D. Groff
[09/09/99]

Repast recaptured
Feasting in a temple of traditional gastronomy in rural France.
By David Downie
[09/08/99]

Out of the Blue
Flying in the age of air rage
When pilots are stabbed to death and flight attendants are taken to the hospital in ambulances, the skies are out of control.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[09/07/99]

Tempests in a Thai-pot
Despite sex scandals and overspeculation, Bangkok residents still find reasons to smile.
By Morris Dye
[09/04/99]

Wanderlust
Belize in the dark
We take to the dark so that we may buy some time in the light.
By Michael Perry
[09/03/99]

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"That woman should not be wearing those pants," said Katherine, a friend of mine visiting from the frigid suburbs of Boston. "Look at her -- her butt's as big as a house and she's walking around in that outrageous outfit as if she doesn't even care."

Katherine had only been in Miami one day. Hers was the same disdain I had heard many times from Northerners who came to take in a few days of winter sun and Art Deco diversions. Welcome to the Land of Big Butts, I tell them, where swaying big hips make the local landscape as much as the Atlantic's waves crashing onto shore.

Miami women take pride in their plump bottoms and zaftig thighs. Showing off is a birthright and there's nothing subtle about it. In I-can-barely-breathe pants and too-too-tight skirts, they shimmy to the grocery store, strut to PTA meetings and sashay to the beauty salon. They relish the attention their conga quakes get them.

A few years ago while writing a guidebook to the city, I submitted to my editor a photo of a Miami tourism promotion poster that had a full-body shot of a bikini-clad model peering over her shoulder with her back to the camera. My editor, a German man living in London, rejected the photo because, he said, "The woman's rear end is just too fat for me to put in the book." He was hoping for a long-legged blond with voluptuous breasts.

I informed my editor that Miami is a tropical city where Latin and Caribbean cultures -- whether they be Cuban, Haitian, Colombian, Brazilian, Bahamian, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Venezuelan, Peruvian or Dominican -- hold sway. And that among these cultures bosom worship is considered infantile, and the ultimate symbol of sexual desire is definitely below the waist. I insisted that the woman in the photo was a typical local beauty, and an ideal example to represent the city. No thanks, he said.

In the week that my friend Katherine stayed with me, I tried my best to explain to her the cultural nuances that give Miami its exotic and erotic character. I told her that it's not that the Spandex woman didn't care about the commotion she was causing, but that in Miami, the bump-and-grind of big hips is a much-desired female attribute, and a seductive symbol of our hot-blooded civic identity.

Not that Miami has no Kate Moss wannabes; there are many, and liposuction is alive and well. But a woman with a big butt in Miami is not trivialized or ridiculed, nor made to feel that she should drop 10 pounds before squeezing into a pair of jeans.

Next page | Gloria Estefan's fat-encased butt