In the African country of Mauritania, the culture is a bit different than our American culture. While women in America are dying to be thin, young women in Mauritania are literally dying to be large. A practice known as leblouh, force feeding girls up to 16,000 calories a day, is used abusively against girls in their early teen years, hoping to make them "attractive" enough to find a husband. They believe that increasing a girls size creates the image that she is mature and ready for marriage.
- Marie Claire Magazine, Ocotber 2009
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Thanks for sharing this. It is very interesting! I wonder if the underweight in that community are treated like the overweight in our society. If they are force feeding calories to teenagers I have a feeling they have taken it to a different intensity level than our society has. Very interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteThat is crazy. It never fails to amaze me how people are willing to mutilate their children and themselves in a bid for social status, or finacial wealth.
ReplyDeleteWow, people will do anything I guess to gain what they consider to be beautiful. Its interesting to learn how people in other parts of the world live their lifes. I wonder what it would be like living their for a change?
ReplyDeleteGrade: 9.5/10
ReplyDeleteMistake: missing possessive apostrophe on girl's
I can see why you wanted to write a summary on this story. It definitely qualifies as a news story. Wow.
Thank you very much Tesha. Yes, I really did want to write this story mostly because I was horrified by in, it was beyond me really. I suppose because of our culture. I definitely deemed it as news-worthy as well. Thank you for letting me do that.
ReplyDeleteHi Carissa--
ReplyDeleteUntil your post, I was not aware of the practice of leblouh, or the abuse inflicted on the young women in Mauritania by force-feeding them 16,000 calories daily. This was a good topic to write about because we all learned something new.
true grimes