Happiness is being force-fed

Allow me to explain the title of this post. The BBC World Service’s Outlook Programme recently spent some time with a Nigerian couple who were newly married. For six months prior to their wedding, the man, Morris had asked his wife, Happiness, to live at a fattening center.

A fattening center.

Here, Happiness would wake up, eat, bathe, sleep, eat, sleep, and so on. The goal: To gain as much weight as possible, because in this culture, fat is a symbol of wealth, power and status. The bride-to-be emerged weighing more than twice that of an average Nigerian woman (about 250 lbs. versus 130 lbs.) Her then-fiance, who is a prince, couldn’t have been happier.

"People will think I am not rich,” he told the BBC of having of a slender wife. “If a woman is not fat and has not gone through that process she does not qualify for marriage." He continues to keep her overweight with a diet of porridge, native salads, rice, beans, meat and fish “to make her more huge and big to maintain [their] stature…”
Is it just me or does this remind you of the force-feeding of ducks to produce foie gras – how they shove grain down their throats until no more can fit in their stomachs and then immobilize them so no muscle can grow. Then they are slaughtered and fed to rich people.

The story of Happiness and her experience at the fattening center brings to mind another BBC story I read years ago about force-feeding of young girls in rural Mauritania. A woman named Fatematou who ran a “fat farm” (so different then the stigma associate with that phrase here) admitted that sometimes the girls, as young as seven, would cry and scream because of the amounts of food they were made to take in. But, Fatematou promised, the little ones were grateful at the end of the treatment: “…when they grow up they are fat and beautiful…They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble. Don't you think that's good?"

So many thoughts are swarming through my head. First, what an strangely interesting dichotomy that exists between culture of the pre-wedding fattening camps in Africa and the pull of the bridal boot camps and wedding weight loss diets that permeate Western society. Second, from a health standpoint, being this overweight carries with it a number of health threats and yet, women like Happiness are purposely overfed and overfed to the point where the gain weight – and the associated risks - that they might never had had in the first place. Third, it appears this is all being done for men! Where is the woman’s say? These women may claim to feel “healthy” or “honored” because of their weight gain, but is this not because they’ve been trained to say so?

Look, I’m not saying that a fuller-figure cannot be beautiful or luscious or attractive – trust me, you know this by now. But that is not the issue here. These are women who are being forcefed like Sumo wrestlers, limited in activity to the point where all they do is sit in a tent and eat and sleep. Why? To serve as a status symbol for their husband-to-be. Is this not similar to ancient Chinese women having their feet bound to limit their mobility and make them appear more “dainty”? Or women being giving gigantic breast implants as gifts by their boyfriends? The impetus is what’s at issue…and the lack of free will. And, of course, the fact that women’s bodies are taken out of their control. I understand different cultures have different standards of beauty as well as unique rituals. But forcefeeding little girls until they scream and cry for relief? Sticking a bride-to-be in a fattening room like an animal for half of a year so she can bulk up for her husband, risking diabetes, heart disease, cancer, joint pain and more? That’s just wrong.

PS The irony of her name and the situation? Need I even address it?

Comments

The true irony...

is that this reminds me of the women who do the exact opposite and are worse than this situation. This reminds me of the woman who -- once they get engaged-- begin to stave themselves into a wedding dress. It is just as sick. It's unhealthy and... downright sick.

It's just as bad or maybe even worse than this fattening her up situation I think. Because at least in this situation, it is someone else being stupid enough to demand that she get fatter... but in Western culture, women starve themselves. No one tells them to. No demands that they do. THEY do it to themselves and choose to do it.

I can't wait till women begin to understand the need to be at a healthy weight for the sake of being healthy. Not to please someone else. Not to fit into some Hollywood image either.

Considering that women in most countries around the world tend to outlive their male counterparts, do you think it's possible that these fattening centers were invented by men in an attempt to ensure that women don't live as long (considering the effects of rapidly gaining and sustaining a large amount of weight)?

I wonder if women will ever stop being slaves to their body- mainly because of society. I just dread thinking of what my daughters might go through.

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There are similar situations of wives encouraged to get fat in the US, like at this site: www.fatgirlfriends.vze.com