Mauritania is a land where up is down! Black is white! And big is beautiful! (Ok, only the last statement is true.)
Yes, that small country in the northwestern region of Africa has the opposite cultural ideal of beauty than that which is held by pretty much the rest of the world. Plump women are considered gorgeous, and skinny (or "scrawny" as they call it) women are disgusting.
Young girls are force-fed cous-cous and fatty milk until they vomit and then force-fed some more! This ritual causes all kinds of unhealthful side-effects in older women, as one can well imagine--high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc.
But Oprah couldn't get enough of it. I saw her show on "beauty around the world," which had a segment on Mauritania and she could not hide her fascination with this place in which her long-battled gut would actually be a boon and not a curse.
She was so overjoyed she burst out into song, "There's a place for us...Somewhere a place for us..."
Sure Oprah would fit right in to Mauritania, but what about naturally scrawny girls? Isn't that the problem with cultural ideals of beauty (no matter how much they may vary from culture to culture)?
Someone, somewhere is always ugly.
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