16 000 Kcal per day: how to live by the laws of beauty in Mauritania
'10.12.2017'
Source: livejournal
Force-feeding, the cult of unhealthy fullness, fat folds and stretch marks as a criterion of attractiveness, 16 thousands of forced calories per day ... This is not the plot of a horror film, but an ordinary life in modern Mauritania, says livejournal psychotherapist, clinical psychologist and author of the intuitive power system Svetlana Bronnikova.
When a military coup took place in the country, the Mauritans decided to return to the origins, in which a woman was seen as subordinate to a man. As a result, girls were forbidden to marry without large body fat reserves. In the same way that America and Europe cultivate slenderness and sometimes painful thinness, Mauritania uses a different style of violence against the body: girls are forcibly put on a diet that is 4 times the norm for a male bodybuilder, and fed for marriage. The girls are sent to a kind of camp, from which they “come back beautiful”. Children from 7 to 12 years old live in a hut and forcibly eat fatty and heavy food, even when it is no longer possible to eat, and if the child cannot eat, they beat him with a stick. Vomiting is forced to eat.
The rite is called leblouh... Grown women say that girls' bodies should "swell like balloons" - this is the attractive image in these places. The tradition is rooted in the history of the ancient Moors, who considered a very fat wife and the same cattle as symbols of wealth and wealth. In 2003, the country's authorities raised the topic of violence against children and started talking about the dangers of obesity; in progressive cities, women began to actively lose weight, but all this lasted no more than four years. After the military coup, everything returned to normal. 80% of girls are now undergoing force-feeding. Men say that they have absorbed a passion for such a female image with their mother's milk, which is why the girls continue to feed.
Each girl eats 4 once a day, her parents this course costs 155 dollars per month 3. Dates with nuts and couscous are ground in oil, 40 balls of 300 kcal each must be eaten by a girl a day, after drinking 6,5 liters of goat milk, biting nourishing porridge - it really turns out that 16 000 calories per day. Girls complain of pain in the stomach and unwillingness to gain weight. The local matron is convinced that she is doing all this for the good of the children, and not vice versa. A serious problem also lies in the fact that in this country girls are married in 12-14 years. Therefore, completeness in many ways creates the illusion that the girl is more mature than in reality. Moreover, for the appearance of stretch marks on the hands of the supervisor pay extra parents.
As adult women, who at one time have gone through the rite, say, completeness, even with a very short stature, is perceived as an object of keen desire for men and no less acute envy of friends. Men literally fight for the right to possess such beauty, and friends admire and ask how they can “grow” their own body. Some women say that they would like to go on a diet, move more easily, play sports, but are afraid of losing their attractiveness for men and status in the circle of friends.
