Universal Desires

[Photo Credit--amazon.com]

In anthropology, we have started reading a book entitled Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty, and Sexuality Among a Saharan People. This book has been both inspiring and eye-opening. The women in the Eastern most group of Moors, also known as the Azawagh Arabs, spend their life devoted to getting, well, fat (in this case not at all a derogatory term, but used for lack of a better word). In this part of the world, by the time girls lose their first baby teeth, the fattening process begins. This process becomes the women's "education." When young girls resist eating after stuffing their face full of milk and porridge, the grandmothers or aunts will throw things at the girls or bend their fingers backwards to make them continue eating. To be fat is to be beautiful and sexually desirable. Being fat means being attractive to men, which means they will be married off. This way of living seemed strange to me at first...here in the West people pay a pretty penny for pills, diet plans, nutritionists, organic foods, and workout machines to be slender. For the Moors, to eat and be larger separates them from the lower castes. Just like we may not understand their wanting to be fat, the Moors do not comprehend the West's desire to be thin. This book, and class, have opened my eyes to the different cultures around the world. While it may seem that we are all so different, we are in many ways the same--even in this case for example: appearance and beauty are universal desires.