from the July 11, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0711/p04s01-woaf.html
Mauritania - Women Rethink a Big Size That is Beautiful but
Brutal In Mauritania, force-feeding of women is declining, but
many risk their health by using pills to gain much-prized heft.
By Claire Soares | Correspondent of The
Christian Science Monitor
NOUAKCHOTT,
MAURITANIA
Big has long been considered beautiful in
Mauritania. But now, a generation of women are abandoning an ancient
practice to fatten up - and some are even redefining beauty to put
their health first.
It's not a lifetime spent scoffing junk food and slurping fizzy
drinks that's to blame for obesity here; rather, a tradition as old
as the desert: gavage.
On the tree-lined boulevards of Paris, the French word describes
the process of fattening up geese to produce foie gras. On
the sand-blanketed streets of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, it
describes the process of forcibly funneling sweetened milk and
millet porridge down the throats of young girls. In this vast
nomadic nation, thin women are an admission of poverty. Voluptuous
wives and daughters, by contrast, are displays of a man's wealth,
and that's where force-feeding comes in.
After campaigns at the national and community level, the brutal
practice is on the way out. The latest government survey, in 2001,
estimated that about 10 percent of women ages 15-19 were force-fed
as young girls, down from 35 percent among 45 to 54-year-olds. But
that older generation of women is now battling a variety of
illnesses as well as child-bearing complications, doctors and
midwives say.
"Even getting out of bed is difficult for some of them, never
mind working," says Mariame Baba Sy, the head of a government
commission on women's issues.
While it's clear that the practice of force-feeding women is on
the decline, the government doesn't keep statistics on obesity, or
track if the decline in gavage is translating into a slimmer,
healthier population. Indeed, some young girls may just be turning
to a less painful way to meet the Mauritanian beauty ideal.
"The real gavage is on the point of becoming extinct. But
there's a new method," says Ms. Baba Sy. "They take pills, some of
them ones you usually give to an animal."
Market vendors offer girls boxes of large pink tablets from
Pakistan, marked as unfit for human consumption, and packets of
Chinese pills intended to treat rheumatism. Vendors say they are
scrambling to keep them in stock for the growing number of young
girls, usually the poorer and less educated, wanting to pile on the
pounds.
"Have you seen this?" says young Fatou, gesturing at a protruding
collarbone. "Look how much it's sticking out. I need to be plumper."
And with that, she tucks a packet of pills into her shopping bag,
alongside a new dress and some makeup.
Some women, though, are rejecting the beauty standard and losing
weight. Swing by the sports stadium in Nouakchott as dusk falls and
you'll see scores of chubby ladies determinedly pattering around the
track, their sneakers poking out beneath their traditional
mephala robes.
Although some women are starting to abandon the old ideal of
beauty for a healthier and more streamlined one, men still cling to
the corpulent canon. So while M'barka Mint M'haimid has embraced
exercise, there is one thing she hates about it -- the guys that
stop their cars and offer her a lift.
"They just don't understand that I want to lose weight," explains
the middle-aged woman, who says her favorite place in the house is
now the bathroom scale .
After being force-fed as a child, M'haimid now won't touch milk
or millet, staples that were pumped into her every two hours, even
when she kept vomiting. While she talks proudly about the 22 lbs.
she has lost in the past month, she knows that at 264 lbs., she
cannot rest.
"My husband tells me not to tire myself out with this weight
loss. These Mauritanian men, they still love fat women. But my
health is more important," she says.
Mariam Aicha, a former mayor of Nouakchott, recalls a doctor
addressing delegates at a recent conference on health. "He said
that, from his professional point of view, it was the thinner the
better, but then admitted that as a man, he liked something to hold
on to," she
says. |