The first verse begins with "I like big butts and I cannot lie", and most of the song is about the rapper's attraction to large buttocks. The second and third verse challenge mainstream norms of beauty: "I ain't talkin' 'bout Playboy/'Cause silicone parts are made for toys" and "So Cosmo says you're fat/Well I ain't down with that!". Sir Mix-a-Lot commented in a 1992 interview: "The song doesn't just say I like large butts, you know? The song is talking about women who damn near kill themselves to try to look like these beanpole models that you see in Vogue magazine." He explains that most women respond positively to the song's message, especially black women: "They all say, 'About time.'"[4] In the prelude that opens the song there is a conversation between two (presumably) thin, white valley girls, where one girl remarks to her friend, "Oh, my God, Becky, look at her butt! It is so big [...] She's just so ... black!", to which Sir Mix-a-Lot, representing the African-American subculture's view, says: "You other brothers can't deny" and "Take the average black man and ask him...".[5] However, Sir Mix-a-Lot admits in a later verse that it is not only African-American men who are attracted to curvy women with the lyric "even white boys got to shout", an aspect which was referenced in a retrospective two decades later.[6]