Botswana.
Interesting that the second video is preceded by a McDonald’s ad.
I am not sure that flattering a man’s wife’s sexual desirability was all that common a tactic for most of history. Having a powerful, rich husband was a credit to a woman, but landing a sexually desirable woman as a wife was not really a credit to a man, or at least not to a noteworthy degree.
Wow, around 50 posts and nobody cracks a joke about cannibals prefer fat women. (Because fat=flavor 
)
Which doesn’t negate my point. Smooth skin (lack of pockmarks/disease, lack of sun damage, etc.) is difficult to obtain when you don’t have medical care, don’t have access to expensive creams, have to work in the fields in the sun, etc.
Smooth skin is desirable regardless of the ease or difficulty of getting it.
Well if we go back to colonial times the criteria for “Good wife you got there!” kudos seem to be -
1: Fecundity
2: Keeping a tidy house
3: Being domestically industrious - sewing / weaving / gardening etc
4: Being a good cook
Having a really good looking wife might actually be somewhat problematic as a really beautiful woman might feel that she more options in life than being a hard working farm wife.
In Mauritania the practice is called leblouh.
The Wiki article does refer to “obesity” as the desired outcome, so the idea isn’t simply to be curvy.
You know, I was going to disagree with you, but I did a review of the 36 Vermeer paintings I have in my online gallery, and tried to categorize the women portrayed in them (main characters only)
Thin: 21 (est. BMI < 22)
Average: 17 (est. BMI 22-26)
Full figured: 1 (est. BMI 26-30)
Obese (est. BMI > 30)
Edited: entered numbers incorrectly…twice.
Interesting pic from MSNBC’s this week in pictures.
Somehow I doubt that many cultures have found morbidly obese to be the epitome of beauty. Our reaction to the physical form of the other gender is not just an arbitrary sociologic entity; it also has evolutionary fitness ramifications. Statistically a morbidly obese women is less likely to be as fecund as a woman with a BMI in the normal to overweight grouping. And the underweight may be completely anovulatory.
The only interesting thing I see is that they say the first ladies of “France and 9 African countries” are there, but there are 11 women listed, and 11 in the photo. Is one of them not the first lady of the place she’s from?
No problem, but you didn’t even provide any points or commentary on why an enslaved Khoisan woman who was shipped to Europe and exhibited in a 19th century “freak show” should be at all relevant in this thread.
You just gave a link to some wackjob racialist.
(bolding mine) Perhaps you should directly quote where the wackjob makes this point then provide credible citations to it’s veracity.
The “interesting” part is that the pic does validate to some degree the large body ideal by some cultures referenced in the OP. The fact that many of these African first ladies are at the top of the social order for their countries, and assumedly represent a near ideal of womanhood for their respective cultures are hefty women pushing (IMO) 200-250 lbs. The first lady of France reflecting the French ideal is half their size.
Perhaps some of the countries permit polygamy, making it possible for a single head of state/government to have more than one first lady.
That’s a hell of an assumption. And most of them aren’t that heavy, and a few look as trim as Mme. Sarkozy.
Interesting, indeed. It made apparent to me that if the norm of beauty was “a bit plumpy”, Sarkozy would look strinkingly unattractive/unhealthy. A bit like an anorexic girl looks to us now.
I’d pretty familiar with what larger women weigh. It’s more than you think. If we could put them on a scale I think you’d lose that bet pretty badly. The larger women in that pic are solidly in the 200-250 lb range.
In the wonderful Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, there’s one character who everyone describes as being very beautiful with her only flaw being that she is too thin. They are constantly trying to fatten her up a bit.
No, I don’t think they are trying to fatten her up to “obesity”, but coming from western culture it was still striking for me to read that, as at least “officially” in western culture thinner is always better.
Mauritania is the only example I can think of. Obesity (and big bellies) are much desired in the traditional culture, to the point that young girls are tortured to achieve it.
In much of the world and through much of history, a fuller, ‘womanly’ figure was much appreciated. But a sexual or societal ideal of truly fat women is almost non-existent. An body easily identifiable as feminine means a curvy body (bust, waist, and hips well-defined) and that seems to be most desirable to the vast majority of men in the world. Being fat or very thin usually diminishes these curves. It’s also obvious that youth is most appealing to human men, and younger women are always more slender than older women and have slimmer waistlines due to their hormonal balance.
I do think that the current Western (and majority Asian) beauty ideal for grown women of extreme slenderness to the point of simulated starvation/prepubescence is bizarre, and atypical compared to the rest of history. It’s notable I think that we only started worshiping this body type after breast implants became so commonplace. There’s no way tiny hips, thighs, and waists would be the media ideal of sexuality these days if all the women who had them also had the small breasts that are most common with very low body weight. The fake boobs (or sometimes real ones!) create that exaggeratedly feminine look that men find so sexy (whether the top or bottom, or both, is exaggerated in comparison to the waist doesn’t seem to matter to them too much).
Rubens was one guy who liked to paint somewhat larger naked ladies (I wouldn’t call them fat though). His art wasn’t typical for the period and I’d be interested to see any other evidence that so-called ‘Rubenesque’ women were the beauty ideal for that time period.
This isn’t a very good example either IMO. These are the wives of powerful African men, but I don’t think it follows that they are the ideal of feminine beauty in their country! That’s certainly not true for any Americanfirstladies. Our President’s wives tend to be average weight, around the same age as their husbands, conservative, and rather mannish (super-short hairstyles and boxy outfits are the norm).
