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 eighty per cent of the world'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.
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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
–The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology
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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 eighty per cent of the world'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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful ethnography,
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This review is from: Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality Among a Saharan People (Hardcover)
"Feeding Desire" is a revealing work of ethnography concerning the culture of force-feeding adolescent girls so that they turn into "bountiful" figures, figures considered attractive among the Saharan Moors. I have used it in two different courses on Africa and students have responded very favorably to it. The discussions about the book were the liveliest of the semester. The book is beautifully written with very good photographs. It is an excellent book.
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