Chicken hips
The women of the houhold 限制的英文clucked disapprovingly when they saw me. It was the first time I had worn African clothes since my arrival in tiny, dusty Gambia, and evidently they were not impresd. They adjusted my head-tie and pulled my lappa, the ankle-length fabric I had wrapped around mylf, even tighter. “ You are too thin,” one of them pronounced. “ It is no good.” They nicknamed me “ Chicken hips”
I marveled at this accolade, for I had never been called thin in my life. It was something I longed for. I would have been flattered if tho ample-bosomed women hadn’t looked so distresd. It was obvious I fell far short of their ideal of beauty.
I had dresd up for a very special occasion----the baptism of a son. The women heaped rice into tin basins the size of laundry tubs, shaping it into mounds with their hands. Five of us sat around one basin, thrusting our fingers into scalding food. The women ate with such relish, such joy. They presd the rice into balls in their fists, squeezing until they bright-red palm oil ran down their forearms and dripped off their elbows.
I tried 十大创意抽奖方式desperately but I could not eat enough to plea them. It was hard for me explain that I come from a culture in which it is almost unemly for a woman t eat too heartily. It’s considered unattractive. It was even harder to even harder to explain that to me thin is beautiful, and in my country we deny ourlves food in our pursuit of perfect slenderness.
大米种类That night, everyone danced to welcome the baby. Women swiveled their broad hips and ud heir hands to emphasize the roundness of their bodies. One needed to be round and wide to make the dancer reminded them of things they wanted to forget, such as poverty, drought and starvation. You never know when the rice was going to run out.
I began to believe that Africa’s image of the perfect female body was far more realistic than the long-legged leanness I had been conditioned to admire. There, it is beautiful—not shameful—to carry weight on the hips and thighs, to have a round stomach and heavy, swinging breasts. Woman do not battle the bulge, they celebrate it. A body is not something to be tamed and moulded.
The friends who had christened me Chicken-hips make it their mission 法超to fatten me up. It
wasn’t long before a diet of rice and rich, oily stew twice a day began to change me. Every month, the women would take stick and measure my backside, nothing with pleasure it gradual expansion. “ Oh Catherine, your buttocks are getting nice now!” they would say.
What was extraordinary was that I, too, believed I was becoming more beautiful. There was no n of panic, no shame, no guilt-ridden resolves to go on the miracle grape-and-water diet. One day, I tied my lappa tight across my hips and went to the market to buy beer for a wedding. I carried the crate of bottles home on my head, swinging my hips slowly as I walked. I felt transformed.
In Gambia, people don’t u words such as “cheating,” “naughty,” or “guilty” when they talk about eating. The language of sin is not applied to food. Fat is desirable. It holds beneficial meaning of abundance, fertility and health.
My perception of beauty altered as my body did. The European tourists on the beach began to look strange and skeletal rather than “slim.” They had no hips. They emed de
void of shape and substance. Woman I once would have 线粒体夏娃envied appeared fragile and even ugly. The ideal they reprented no longer made n.
After a year, I came home. I preached my new way of eing to anyone who would listen. I wanted to cling to the liberating belief hat losing weight had nothing to do with lf-love.
Family members kindly suggested that I might look and feel better if I limed down a little. They encouraged me to join an exerci club; I wandered around the malls in a dislocated daze. I felt uncomfortable trying on clothes that hung so elegantly on the mannequins, I began hearing old voices inside my head: “Plaid makes you look fat… your are too short for that style… vertical stripes are more slimming… wear black.”
I joined the club. Just a few weeks after I had worn a lappa and scooped up rice with my hands, I was climbing into pink leotards and aerobics shoes. The goobumpsinstructor told me that I had to t fitness goals and “weigh in” after my workouts. There were mirrors on the walls and I among them felt they were somehow flawed. As the aerobics instructor barked out commands for arm lifts and leg lifts, I pictured Gambian women pounding起源英语 millet and danci
ng in a circle with their arm raid high. I don’t mean to romanticize their rock-hard lives, but we were hardly to be envied as we ran like fools between two walls to the tiresome beat of synthesized music.
We were a roomful of women striving to reshape ourlves into some kind of pubertal ideal. I reverted to my natural state: one of yearning to be slimmer and more fit than I was. My freedom had been temporary. I was home, where fat is feared and despid. It was time to exert control over my body and my life. I 秋天里的落叶dreaded the thought of people saying, “She’s let herlf go.”
