Girls force fed

[Liberal_in_LA]

Women fight Mauritania's fattening tradition

:wtf:

Nouakchott, Mauritania (CNN) -- Young Mauritanian girls are traditionally force-fed and fattened for the sake of beauty and marriage, but now some are fighting the tradition, saying it's dangerous to their health.

Heavier girls and women are viewed as beautiful, wealthy and socially-accepted while their slimmer counterparts are considered inferior and bring shame on their families in Mauritanian society.

It is this shame that has helped keep leblouh -- or forced-fattening -- in practice.

Mariam Mint Ahmed, 25, says it's time leblouh was consigned to history.

"It is our responsibility as a young generation to put an end to the custom that threatens our lives," Mint Ahmed, a married trader who lives in the capital Nouakchott, told CNN. "I know so many innocent girls that were fattened up against their will to be married off and most of them got sick. I feel sad when I constantly see them struggling with blood pressure, hypertension and heart diseases."


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Before they used camel milk, nowadays the girls are force-fed with chemicals used to fatten animals

She tells us that girls who don't finish the fattening meals put before them can be punished. One method, according to Mint Ahmed, is to tie a girl's toes to sticks and if she does not eat, pressure is applied to the sticks sending shockwaves of pain through the girl's feet.

"My mother started fattening me forcibly when I was 13-years-old. She used to beat me to eat more oiled couscous and fat lamb's meat. Each time I thought my stomach would explode," Selekeha Mint Sidi recalls.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/10/12/mauritania.force.feed/index.html?hpt=Sbin

[spooky3]

1. horrifying - as is starving oneself to be sexually attractive

[hendo]

2. would I be too stereotypically American

If I admit that I had to Google Mauritania to find out where it was?

[Rex]

3. Most people don't know where it is.

Would be a very safe bet.

[hendo]

4. Eastern Africa ;)

Near Moroco, Mali, and Algeria. Strange thing is, I knew exactly where each of those three countries were, but somehow Mauritania has never come up before this.

[Number23]

5. Good grief. On one hand, it's fascinating how culture influences one's perception of beauty

On the other hand, force feeding (or starving) someone for the sake of it is sickening.