Young Girls Stuffed For Beauty in Mauritania
As annoying (and, yes, unhealthy, and even life-destroying in many cases) as it is that our culture demands a size zero in order for one to be considered beautiful, some cultures may be just as or more disturbing in their beauty trends. You might have heard about body mutilation to appear more beautiful (or to ensure a girl will not cheat on her husband, in the event of female genital mutilation), or about skin bleaching to appear whiter (the contrast of our Western tradition of tanning). But did you know that in some countries they stuff their girls—much like one might stuff a poor goose to make foie gras, or a pig to roast for the holidays—to make them fatter in order to be more attractive?
In Mauritania, this is exactly what they do. Stretch marks are considered highly attractive in the country. Little girls and teens, ages seven to fourteen, are taken out to the desert where they are forcibly stuffed with food to make them “sexier.” They are filled with rich, fatty foods and oily substances until they cannot bear it—and if they throw up after so much force-feeding, they are then forced to consume their own vomit.
If they refuse to eat, they are beaten. The goal, according to one force-feeding older woman, is to make the girls blow up like balloons. Fatness, in Mauritania, is a symbol of wealth. The fatter the bride, it is thought that the better the husband is, as he can obviously provide for her. This is, of course, ludicrous, since the poor girls are fattened up like Jack Sprat’s wife before they are even wed in the first place!
To become the “erotic” and “comforting” models of fatness the men seek, these girls are fed up to 16,0000 calories a day—about four times that of a male bodybuilder.
When I first heard that large women were considered sexy in Mauritania, I thought it was pretty cool. After all, if women in America were thought of in such a light, maybe we wouldn’t be as obsessed about our weight as much as we are—and maybe there wouldn’t be so much bullying. But that was before I heard about what lengths they go to in making these girls so painfully obese—and that it’s not even a choice. They’re not naturally overweight, but forced to become so in order to attract a mate, like animals. And if such a treatment still exists for women in the world (among so many other despicable acts of violence and sexism), we still have a long way to go toward equality across the board.