beauty is pain: Just in Mauritania

Having a slender slim body is what makes a woman beautiful. Perhaps that would be the case in many parts of the world. Girls (including me), have this constant worry that if you eat too much, you’ll gain more weight, you’ll become fatter, and that’s not good. Apart from that quite distorted perception of slim or thin is beautiful, however, I think it’s something just right to watch what you eat, for health purpose. Being fat may make you get tired so easily, you can’t walk or move lots without feeling extremely exhausted, but, at the same time, I’m against ill dieting as well. No rice at all, calculating calories every time you wish to munch on any food, ah wait, that’s way too much! If your BMI (Body Mass Index) is within a normal range, you actually have that healthy weight, so it's perfectly fine! Let go of that burdening supermodel's body-type aim. Just eat normally, stay healthy, and avoid obesity J

Enough with my nutritionist rambles. Here is another beauty story. It's just not easy to achieve that beauty standard effortlessly. It's somewhat amazing (yet horrifying) to see people wish to do just anything to be beautiful. In Mauritania that lies between Western Sahara and Senegal, big women (obese ones I'd say) are traditionally deemed as more beautiful and desirable. In order to find a husband, many of the women are being pushed to dangerous lengths to gain weight from being force fed to taking pills that are not fit for human consumption. Having a fat wife is desirable and is a sign of wealth and prestige in the country where food is in short supply. The girls are fattened up from the age of eight by their families in a practice referred to as 'gavage' - a French word that means force feeding and is used to describe the fattening of geese to make ‘foie gras’ (a food product made of the liver of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened).

An overweight woman of Mauritania
Photo by BBC

Once they reach a marriageable age, girls are sent to 'fat camps' in the desert where they are fed 15,000 calories a day. For breakfast, the girls have breadcrumbs soaked in olive oil washed down with camel's milk. They then have frequent meals throughout the day of goat's meat, bread, figs and couscous, all with more camel milk to drink. Morton found that many refer to the over-eating as torture and parents have been known to crush their daughters' toes with pincers if they resist.

Mauritanian girls drink lots of camel's milk to gain weight
Photo by Corbis

However, since this fattening process makes them feel sick and takes much time, the girls have also found another way to gain weight - taking pills. One local woman told Morton, a U.S journalist: 'Medication is the modern form of gavage. Women use steroids and they are taking pills made from birds. These pills are not meant to be used by humans. The women said the animal growth hormones end up giving the women who take them a disproportionate body shape with a big stomach, face and breasts but thin arms and legs. She said: 'The person now looks more like a seal than a human being. Women can't have children because of this type of gavage. The big problem is this often leads to heart failure, repeated heart attacks, rare are the ones who escape. There are consequences - diseases, malformations and insanity.

What a suffering to be beautiful!