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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While in the West it is said that women can never be too thin, semi-nomadic Arabs in Niger cherish a feminine ideal of extreme fatness. Feeding Desire analyses this beauty ideal in the context of Islam, conceptions of health, and notions of desire
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Part 1: Entering the Field Chapter 1 Coming into the Azawagh Chapter 2 Getting Fat Part 2 Self-Representations Chapter 3 In the Name of Allah, Most Benevolent, Ever Merciful Chapter 4 Ties of Blood, Ties of Milk, Ties of Marriage Chapter 5 "The Men Bring Us What We Will Eat" Part 3 Veiled Logics Chapter 6 The Interior Spaces of Social Life: Bodies of Men, Bodies of Women Chapter 7 The Exterior Spaces of Social Life: Desert, Village, Tent Part 4 Negotiating Life's Challenges Chapter 8 Well-being and Illness Chapter 9 Beauty, Sex and Desire
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'Popenoe illuminates her theoretical arguments with compelling examples. She has a gift for vivid descriptions, not only of people, but also of the material landscapes in which the Azawagh are socially placed ... It is the kind of book that we need to teach right now.' - The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780415280969
Publisert
2003-10-29
Utgiver
Vendor
Routledge
Vekt
400 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
U, G, 05, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
256

Forfatter

Biographical note

Rebecca Popenoe is Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Uppsala University in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Virginia and Middlebury College in the U.S. as well as at Stockholm and Linköping Universities in Sweden.