The women were exhibited for their steatopygic body type uncommon in Western Europe that was perceived as a curiosity at that time, and became subject of scientific interest as well as of erotic projection.

In the 1790s, a free black (a designation for people of enslaved descent) trader named Peter Cesars (also recorded as Caesar[6]) met her and encouraged her to move to Cape Town.

It is unknown whether Baartman went willingly or was forced, although the acceptance of her earlier refusal could mean that she was coerced, or simply changed her mind when joined by Cesars.

According to a British legal report of 26 November 1810, an affidavit supplied to the Court of King's Bench from a "Mr. Bullock of Liverpool Museum" stated: "some months since a Mr. Alexander Dunlop, who, he believed, was a surgeon in the army, came to him to sell the skin of a Camelopard, which he had brought from the Cape of Good Hope....

Taylor then sold her to a man sometimes reported as an animal trainer, S. Réaux,[22] but whose name was actually Jean Riaux and belonged to a ballet master who had been deported from the Cape Colony for seditious behaviour.

French scientists were curious about whether she had the elongated labia which earlier naturalists such as François Levaillant had purportedly observed other Khoekhoe women to have at the Cape.

[22] French naturalists, among them Georges Cuvier, head keeper of the menagerie at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle and founder of the discipline of comparative anatomy, visited her.

At the end of her life she was penniless, which was probably connected to the economic depression in France after Napoleon's defeat, resulting in a dearth of audiences that were able and willing to pay to see her.

[5] According to present-day accounts in the New York Times and The Independent, she was also working as a prostitute,[23][24] but the biography by Crais and Scully only notes that as an uncertain possibility (since she was exhibited, besides other places, at the brothel in Cours des Fontaines).

[5] The French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville published notes on the dissection in 1816, which were republished by Georges Cuvier in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817.

[9] Saint-Hilaire applied on behalf of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle to retain her remains (Cuvier had preserved her brain, genitalia and skeleton[9]), on the grounds that it was of a singular specimen of humanity and therefore of special scientific interest.

A poem written in 1998 by South African poet Diana Ferrus, herself of Khoekhoe descent, entitled "I've come to take you home", played a pivotal role in spurring the movement to bring Baartman's remains back to her birth soil.

Historian Neil Parsons writes of two Khoekhoe children 13 and six years old respectively, who were taken from South Africa and displayed at a holiday fair in Elberfeld, Prussia, in 1845.

[citation needed] Baartman's tale may be better known because she was the first Khoekhoe taken from her homeland, or because of the extensive exploitation and examination of her body by scientists such as Georges Cuvier, an anatomist, and the public as well as the mistreatment she received during and after her lifetime.

All of his theories regarding sexual primitivism are influenced and supported by the anatomical studies and illustrations of Sarah Baartman which were created by Georges Cuvier.

[28] Much speculation and study about colonialist influence relates to Baartman's name, social status, her illustrated and performed presentation as the "Hottentot Venus", although considered an extremely offensive term, and the negotiation for her body's return to her homeland.

[5][4] These components and events in Baartman's life have been used by activists and theorists to determine the ways in which 19th-century European colonists exercised control and authority over Khoekhoe people and simultaneously crafted racist and sexist ideologies about their culture.

[4] Travelogues and imagery depicting Black women as "sexually primitive" and "savage" enforced the belief that it was in Africa's best interest to be colonised by European settlers.

[4] Scholarly arguments discuss how Baartman's body became a symbolic depiction of "all African women" as "fierce, savage, naked, and untamable" and became a crucial role in colonising parts of Africa and shaping narratives.

According to the studies of contemporary feminists, traditional iconography and historical illustrations of Baartman are effective in revealing the ideological representation of black women in art throughout history.

[35] Renee Cox, Renée Green, Joyce Scott, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis are artists who seek to investigate contemporary social and cultural issues that still surround the African female body.

In this piece, Harris photographs Victoria Cox who presents herself as Baartman while wearing large, sculptural, gilded metal breasts and buttocks attached to her body.

Green created a specific viewing arrangement to investigate the European perception of the black female body as "exotic", "bizarre" and "monstrous".

From the moment he saw West Side Story and the Alvin Ailey dance troupe, he found himself captivated by "ethnic minorities" — black girls, PRs.

"[46] Oliveira goes on to assert that Baartman performed on her own terms and was unwilling to view herself as a tool for scientific advancement, an object of entertainment, or a pawn of the state.

Artist Valérie Oka's (Untitled, 2015) rendered a live performance of a black naked woman in a cage with the door swung open, walking around a sculpture of male genitalia, repeatedly.

The article also mentions other African female icons and how artists are expressing themselves through performance and discussion by posing the question "How Does the White Man Represent the Black Woman?".

Social scientists James McKay and Helen Johnson cited Baartman to fit newspaper coverage of the African-American tennis players Venus and Serena Williams within racist trans-historical narratives of "pornographic eroticism" and "sexual grotesquerie."

[51][52] In recent years, some black women have found her story to be a source of empowerment, one that protests the ideals of white mainstream beauty, as curvaceous bodies are increasingly lauded in popular culture and mass media.

[53] Paramount Chief Glen Taaibosch, chair of the Gauteng Khoi and San Council, says that today "we call her our Hottentot Queen" and honour her.