Feeding Desire: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is a very readable text, at times almost a 'travel' book, with wonderfully written descriptions that will also appeal to a non-academic readership. Although the theoretical and methodological discussions are quite seamlessly integrated, there is no question that this is a scholarly work. Popendoe's research is thorough, her analysis comprehensive, and the result is a most interesting and welcome contribution to social studies of the body."
–The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology
Book Description
While the Western world adheres to a beauty ideal that says women can never be too thin, the semi-nomadic Moors of the Sahara desert have for centuries cherished a feminine ideal of extreme fatness. Voluptuous immobility is thought to beautify girls' bodies, hasten the onset of puberty, heighten their sexuality and ripen them for marriage. From the time of the loss of their first milk teeth, girls are directed to eat huge bowls of milk and porridge in one of the world's few examples of active female fattening.
Based on fieldwork in an Arab village in Niger, Feeding Desire analyses the meanings of women's fatness as constituted by desire, kinship, concepts of health, Islam, and the crucial social need to manage sexuality. By demonstrating how a particular beauty ideal can only be understood within wider social structures and cultural logics, the book also implicitly provides a new way of thinking about the ideal of slimness in late Western capitalism. Offering a reminder that an estimated 80% of theworld's societies prefer plump women, this gracefully written book is both a fascinating exploration of the nature of bodily ideals and a highly readable ethnography of a Saharan people.
Feeding Desire: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara
Feeding Desire: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara,R. POPENOE,Rebecca Popenoe,Routledge,0415280966,Anthropology - Cultural,Azaouak Valley (Mali and Niger,Azaouak Valley (Mali and Niger),Muslim women,Overweight women,Popular Culture - General,Sex customs,Social Science,Sociology,Women's Studies - General,Women, Arab,Diets & dieting,Niger,Women's studies
Feeding Desire: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara
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