Sarah was displayed because of her physical features, particularly steatopygia, which is described as the accumulation of large amounts of fat on the buttocks. She was seen as a freak of nature under the European gaze her body's figure was normal in the Khoikhoi and other peoples of arid parts of southern Africa. She was falsely portrayed as evidence of racial difference and subjected to degrading and racist spectacle throughout her life, ultimately dying in poverty on 29 December 1815.

Her exploitation continued after death when scientists dissected her body and displayed her brain, skeleton, and sexual organs in a Paris museum until 1974. Today, Baartman is widely regarded as a powerful symbol of colonial exploitation, racism, and the commodification of Black bodies, and her remains were finally returned to South Africa for burial in 2002.