Africa's Perception of Beauty

Someone from my google form recommended me to compare the US perception of beauty with other perceptions of beauty throughout the world. I loved this idea and figured I could start a little series on my blog about it.

This is just a disclaimer: I am not trying to stereotype all the countries in Africa, this was just the information I found from my research.

Mauritania

Many countries around the world have different beauty standards than our Western ideas of beautiful. Many countries in Africa, like Mauritania, see fat as beautiful because it is a sign of wealth. In Mauritania, if you are fat, then it shows that you can afford a lot of food which symbolizes a high social class. Also, gaining weight is a sign of puberty and growing into a woman, so many girls are force fed starting at the age of 9. These young girls are force fed at such a young age because they are expected to get married around that time. In countries like Mauritania, men want to marry “fat” girls. This video explains what girls in Mauritania are forced to eat in order to achieve a bigger body size.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM2q7XFOOgg

This video was very shocking to me. That their own mothers don’t see them as beautiful because they aren’t fat. Their mothers push them to eat up to 16,000 calories a day, which is very unhealthy and leads to many health issues in the future such as diabetes and heart disease. Most of the young girls don’t want to be fat and don’t enjoy being force fed but they do it anyways to obey their parents. Despite how much they hate being forced fed, they still believe that they need to do it and will continue this tradition with their own children.

This situation reminds me of the US, just reversed. In the US many girls feel pressured to look skinny because that’s what our society sees as beautiful. Similar to Mauritania, many mothers in the US pressure their children to lose weight because they think their kids are not skinny enough. This pressure causes many young people to develop eating disorders. I think this video is a good representation of the different definitions of beautiful throughout the world.