My weekly analysis is about a popular culture topic involving cultural beliefs from another country. I recently read an interesting story about this topic in October's issue of Marie Claire magazine, (2009). The article highlights the culture, rituals, and stereotyping of romance in Mauritanian, a country located in West Africa.
The story discusses how the young women of Mauritanian are molded into to looking the part of a suitable wife for the men of the country. In an attempt to "return to tradition", the shaky government has begun implementing an old custom that the women should be obese for their men. Yes, the men of Mauritanian prefer to have their wives be obese. "The Practice is re-emerging because men still find mounds of female flesh comforting and erotic; the attraction is engrained from birth", explains Seyid Ould Seyid, a Mauritanian male journalist, (Haworth, p. 106, 2009).
How ironic that the men of Mauritanian are entranced by what many American men would consider a turnoff. The Mauritanian men find stretch marks on a woman to be a bonus, in their bizarre prize of obesity, (Haworth, p. 106-107, 2009).
Obviously, the Mauritanian men feel that the weight of their woman is just an extension of cosmetic beauty. In reality, these women are being abused physically and mentally. The women are sent by their families to a camp that focuses on helping the women prepare for marriage, by drastically increasing their weight. At this center the women are force-fed an upwards of 16,000 calories per day in order to gain a large amount of weight in a short amount of time. The women will face abuse if they do not eat the food they are given. In addition to eating mass quantities of food, the women are made to lie around all day doing nothing, so as not to contradict their weight gain, (Haworth, 2009).
Unfortunately, the women are not only dealing with the mental abuse from their families, and the "obese camp" that they have been made to live at; their bodies are facing tremendous physical abuse from eating so much. The obese women have to deal with the physical side effects of being obese, including diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
How is something so "beautiful" to one culture considered so "ugly" by another…
References
Haworth, A., (October, 2009) Forced to be fat. Marie Claire, 16,104-108.
Wow, I have never heard of this ritual. But it seems like it is a bad and unhealthy ritual to even consider. I can understand how men can like obese women but they should not force women to become this way. It is very unhealthy mentally and physically. To force someone to go through that is almost saying that I own you and you are going to do what I say no matter what.
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing this to my attention. I am going to have to check it out more.
I read that article too! It was kind of bizarre that our culture idolizes skinny size 2 women and another culture glorifies obesity. The article stated that stretch marks which again are deemed unattractive in American society are actually like a badge of honor in that country. It would be better if all shapes and sizes were acceptable in any society instead of one extreme or the other. It is awful the level of pressure many women put on themselves to the point of being anorexic, but who would've thought there were cultures that abusively force feed beat their women to gain.
ReplyDeleteHUMN 341, Response to Weekly Analysis 5, Nicole Hayward