Marilyn Monroe - An ideal weight?
Today's post will deal with psychological and societal factors in Morocco where many people from the middle classes want to appear “rich and well-fed,” accelerating the trends.
My mom has an American friend who grew up in the sixties and early seventies (in Denver), who thinks her mother seemed to be obsessed with making her fat. She used to talk about it being nice to be "pleasingly plump." We are not sure where this idea came from. Even looking at the movie stars of American movie stars from past decades, my American friend says she thinks they look healthy (not anorexic), but definitely not overweight, either.
Cyd Charisse - An ideal weight?
A lot of Moroccan girls and women (mainly from the lower and middle classes) seem to be obsessed with the idea of gaining weight. They go the pharmacy and buy medicines (without a prescription, of course) that are designed for increasing the appetites of anorexic people. They take these medicines "to help themselves get a little fatter." The people doing this are NOT skin and bones; they are people who look of pretty normal weights (about like these pictures above). They feel like they will be more attractive.
My little sister IS thinner than normal. But according to our family's pediatrician, she is healthy, and of the same "sleight" build as her father. Well-meaning relatives, such as our grandmother, have bought this anorexic syrup medicine (without doctors advice) and were giving it to her without my parents' knowledge or consent when she stayed with them. Not only that, but they were giving her about four times the dosage stated on the bottle, which was making her really sleepy. They sent it home with her and told her she MUST keep taking it. Fortunately, our family has better sense, and forbid her to take it. So guess what happened--the remaining syrup was stolen by our maid (we found it in her purse). Apparently our maid wants to get fatter, too. (She's of normal weight.)
Some girls who take this syrup end up looking bloated and pasty. I think they look disgusting, but my little sister insists they look "much better!" These are mainly unmarried girls, so I think they feel it will help them "catch a husband" better., which is done mainly by appearances in Morocco.
My little sister THINKS she is too skinny (at least she's teased by the girls at school who say she is, but they are chubby, so it's probably jealousy). So she wears four pairs of pants under her jeans. I ask her why she is doing this, especially when it is over 100°F outside! She says it's so that the thigh area of the jeans will not look "loose," but filled out, and tight all around, like her friends look in their jeans. All I can say is that I remember being this age (fourteen) and how important it is at that age to dress like your friends.
So, the question is, WHY do girls want to look like this? I think it has to do with poor people wanting to look prosperous, and well-fed, as we still have a lot of skinny poor people in Morocco who hardly have enough to eat. I think being skinny is equated with being poor, and NO ONE wants to LOOK POOR. Many of the rich are quite overweight; whereas poor people in Morocco are NEVER overweight.
I've heard several times over many years that down in the Western Sahara Province of Morocco, women force-feed their daughters to get fat and even have them roll on the beach at midnight to get fat (probably some kind of a witchcraft method). I don't really know if it's true, but I did come across this very interesting article from the BBC on a similar thing happening in Mauretania, which is right next to that area:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3429903.stm
This article is about Mauretania's Wife-Fattening Farm, and interestingly, gives the same reasons as I've stated above--gaining weight because it's believed it will be easier to "catch a husband."
Fat Women in Mauretania, photo by Pascale Harter, BBC
In spite of all this, calling someone FAT in Morocco IS an insult. Kids in school call kids who are chubby FAT, and in most of Morocco, no one likes FAT women, although fat men seem to be tolerated. But no one wants to marry a fat man, either.
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