http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3429903.stm
This article is a bit old- it dates back to 2004 to be exact. I came across it when I was looking for Mauritania news in English (there are several websites in English, but they are not updated on a daily basis. Anyone knows of a good website?), and found it very interesting.
Among white Moor Arabs in Mauritania, force-feeding is still practiced on girls in an attempt to make them fat. Traditionally, fatness is regarded as a sign of wealth and beauty. A fat woman is more desirable than a thin woman. There are even "fat farms," where parents send their girls to be fed a lot of food so they will become fat. If the girl refuses to eat, her parents punish her.
"When they are small they don't understand, but when they grow up they are fat and beautiful," said Fatematou, a "fat farm" manager. She argued that in the end, the girls were grateful. "They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble."
As a country develops, its culture changes. While some beliefs are retained, others evolve. Today, the view of fatness being desirable is being labeled as "old-fashioned." As of 2004, only one in 10 girls were treated with force feeding. Men started to look for thin women. "Fat" and "beautiful" do not co-exist anymore.
This prompts me to think about what development means for cultural values. Why is there a change in belief? Why did men start thinking that thin women are more attractive then fat ones (this is afterall the main reason why women want to gain or lose weight)? If Mauritania had never developed, had never had contacts with outside world (esp. the West), if Mauritania was a world of its own isolated from the rest of the world, would the belief that fatness is beauty have changed? (I'm not advocating for force-feeding- it harms people and should be eliminated. Nor am I saying that fatness is good. The state of well-being of people should be one of the concerns as a country develops, and being obese definitely brings health issues. However, most women want to be thin in order to be more desirable and socially acceptable, and this is the result of a change in cultural values.)
If development is supposed to improve people's lives, why is it not improving those of women's? Why is it that, even in developed nations, the idea of "fat= beauty" has evolved into "thin= beauty," instead of "appearance should not matter" or " 'fat' and 'thin' are just two neutral adjectives with neither positive or negative connotations"? In the end, women are the ones to suffer. They either have to be forced-fed or starve themselves to death so that they are desirable. The girls who were force-fed, or are still being force-fed, in Mauritania, will now have to starve themselves, if they, according to Fatematou, "...want to find a man, a European or a Mauritanian..."
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3 comments:
Whoa what an interesting article. I seems that it reminds me of African Americans who are proud of their fatness in terms of beauty and health. But, that's some interesting article though.
It seems to me that the thing that needs to be changed is the attitude that a woman's main goal in life is "to find a man", hence the goal of being attractive (through fatness or thinness, or plastic surgery, or whatever).
In this age of plethora of 'slender business', it is so interesting to know there is such a thing as force-feeding girls to make them fat which is translated into beautiful. Look at portraits of those women say during Renaissance or Renoire, women are lot plumpier. Also think of "Snow White" from Disney in erly 1930's. Her waistline is nearly twice of that of Little Mermaid. I think it is cultural brainwashing in 'rookism' era where commercialism and capitalism
skillfully instilling the idea that slim is beautiful to the point of starving oneself.
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