Yesterday's New York Times included an article about a long-standing custom in the West African nation of Mauritania: literally forcing girls and women to pack on pounds through the programmed overconsumption of food and milk in order to make them more sexually desirable to men.
From the standpoint of anyone in the thinness-championing culture of the West, this is unspeakably bizarre. But having become vividly familiar with the health problems posed by extreme obesity, Mauritania's government is discouraging this practice -- known as "gavage" -- at last.
If only the gross inhumanity of this practice -- which sometimes involves forcing girls and women who throw up to eat their own vomit and take some of the same weight-gain-promoting steroids abused by American bodybuilders -- had been as obvious long ago to Mauritanians as it seems to us, a nationwide health crisis in a country with a ramshackle economy would not have been required to initiate its demise.
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- At the Olympic Sports Stadium here, a collection of dun-colored buildings rising mirage-like from the vast Sahara, about a dozen women clad in tennis shoes and sandals circled the grandstands one evening in late June, puffing with each step.Between pants came brief explanations for their labors. "Because I am fat," said one, a dark-eyed 34-year-old close to 200 pounds. Another, a 30-year-old in bright pink sneakers, said, "For myself, for my health and to be skinny." It is a typically Western after-work scene. But this is the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the mirror opposite of the West on questions of women's weight. To men here, fat is sexy. And in this patriarchal region, many Mauritanian women do everything possible -- and have everything possible done to them -- to put on pounds.
Now Mauritania's government is out to change that. In recent years, television commercials and official pronouncements have promoted a new message: being fat leads to diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure and other woes. The joggers outside the Olympic stadium testify to their impact: Until lately, a Mauritanian woman in jogging shoes was roughly as common as a camel in stiletto heels.
But in other respects, the message faces an uphill run. A 2001 government survey of 68,000 women found that one in five between ages 15 and 49 had been deliberately overfed. And nearly 70 percent -- and even more among teenagers -- said they did not regret it.
Comments
I saw a show on this on one of the HD specialty channels. It was truly horrifying what they were doing to these girls, for that's what they are when they have the practice forced upon them. It is not only cruel to the huge women, but is also a burden on the rest of the community, who often have so little, but all their food, especially milk, going to the marrying young women.
Posted by: God (and a half) | July 5, 2007 10:20 AM
Wow! what the hell is wrong with those people
Posted by: Bill from Dover | July 5, 2007 10:41 AM