Obesity, which today is considered one of the most serious medical problems in the world, is considered an indicator of beauty and status in this country. In Mauritania, a small country in West Africa, one of the most interesting traditions in the world has been observed for many years.
The problem of obesity is one of the largest for many countries in the world, but not for Mauritania, located in West Africa.
In this country, thin women are considered ugly and poor. To find a husband, get married and have status, you need to have an impressive weight.
Families do their best to ensure that young representatives of the fair sex are "in the body" as they approach marriageable age. Young girls preparing for marriage get a lot of calories by eating a lot of goat's milk, bread and olive oil, goat meat, and sometimes having lunch twice a day.
Young ladies, deliberately making themselves obese, are trying to gain weight and become one of the "beautiful" women in the country. This deliberate obesity is also called "gavage", which refers to the forced fattening of ducks.
Mauritania, one of the poorest countries in the world in West Africa, faces a serious food problem. However, about 20% of Mauritanian women are obese, and more than half are overweight.
And among the male half of the country, only about 4% are obese and 20% are overweight. Men living in Mauritania also say that fat women are beautiful and that they prefer to marry such women.
Under these conditions, families often resort to force-feeding girls as they reach marriageable age in order to adjust them to Mauritanian beauty standards.
In Mauritania, they not only continue this tradition, but even as punishment break the toes of those who refuse to eat so much.
The correspondent of the American HBO channel, after two days in this place, returned to her homeland with an additional ten kilograms of weight. It is believed that women who weigh less than 60 kilograms are so poor that they cannot afford sufficient food. Of course, with such a weight, they cannot get married and become outcasts.
Although the girls themselves, who are forcibly forced to eat for further marriage, say that it is torture and they will not do the same with their children, most families do not want to give up this tradition.
