Fat Is Beautiful
Article 26
Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty
In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight and learning customs in a special room. “To be called a ‘slim princess’ is an abuse,” says a defender of the practice.
By Ann M. Simmons
TIMES STAFF WRITER
AKPABUYO, Nigeria—Margaret Bassey Ene currently has one mission in life: gaining weight. The Nigerian teenager has spent every day since early June in a “fattening room” specially set aside in her father’s mudand-thatch house. Most of her waking hours are spent eating bowl after bowl of rice, yams, plantains, beans and gari, a porridge-like mixture of dried cassava and water. After three more months of starchy diet and forced inactivity, Margaret will be ready to reenter society bearing the traditional mark of female beauty among her Efik people: fat. In contrast to many Western cultures where thin is in, many culture-conscious people in the Efik and other communities in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River state hail a woman’s rotundity as a sign of good health, prosperity and allure. The fattening room is at the center of a centuries-old rite of passage from maidenhood to womanhood. The months spent in pursuit of poundage are supplemented by daily visits from elderly matrons who impart tips on how to be a successful wife and mother. Nowadays, though, girls who are not yet marriage-bound do a tour in the rooms purely as a coming-of-age ceremony. And sometimes, nursing mothers return to the rooms to put on more weight.
“The fattening room is like a kind of school where the girl is taught about motherhood,” said Sylvester Odey, director of the Cultural Center Board in Calabar, capital of Cross River state. “Your daily routine is to sleep, eat and grow fat.” Like many traditional African customs, the fattening room is facing relentless pressure from Western influences. Health campaigns linking excess fat to heart disease and other illnesses are changing the eating habits of many Nigerians, and
Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty
In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight and learning customs in a special room. “To be called a ‘slim princess’ is an abuse,” says a defender of the practice.
By Ann M. Simmons
TIMES STAFF WRITER
AKPABUYO, Nigeria—Margaret Bassey Ene currently has one mission in life: gaining weight. The Nigerian teenager has spent every day since early June in a “fattening room” specially set aside in her father’s mudand-thatch house. Most of her waking hours are spent eating bowl after bowl of rice, yams, plantains, beans and gari, a porridge-like mixture of dried cassava and water. After three more months of starchy diet and forced inactivity, Margaret will be ready to reenter society bearing the traditional mark of female beauty among her Efik people: fat. In contrast to many Western cultures where thin is in, many culture-conscious people in the Efik and other communities in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River state hail a woman’s rotundity as a sign of good health, prosperity and allure. The fattening room is at the center of a centuries-old rite of passage from maidenhood to womanhood. The months spent in pursuit of poundage are supplemented by daily visits from elderly matrons who impart tips on how to be a successful wife and mother. Nowadays, though, girls who are not yet marriage-bound do a tour in the rooms purely as a coming-of-age ceremony. And sometimes, nursing mothers return to the rooms to put on more weight.
“The fattening room is like a kind of school where the girl is taught about motherhood,” said Sylvester Odey, director of the Cultural Center Board in Calabar, capital of Cross River state. “Your daily routine is to sleep, eat and grow fat.” Like many traditional African customs, the fattening room is facing relentless pressure from Western influences. Health campaigns linking excess fat to heart disease and other illnesses are changing the eating habits of many Nigerians, and