Mauritania vs. Orange Shirt Guy
Here goes my long-awaited, much-anticipated blogging debut. Andrew asked for a
Texan perspective, but I don’t really think I reflect the “typical” Texan viewpoint. Nevertheless, I will write.
I came across this article today in the New York Times:
It’s not exactly about a policy issue, but I think I could picture the group talking about this around the fire. Besides, I’ll work my way to the policy stuff. Patience, please.The article is about women in Mauritania who are deliberately overfed, because, to them, obesity is a desired quality in women. It’s a sign of affluence and, yes, beauty. Young girls are forced to eat calorie-rich and fatty foods, often to the point of throwing up, often to the point of torture. In Mauritania, the fatter a girl is, the better. Though the situation has improved some for contemporary women, the attitude remains. At first, I merely noticed the cultural differences between this country and most of the Western world. But then I sat and thought about it, and there really isn’t that much difference. In the United States and most of the West, women are expected to be thin, small, and, basically, weak. In Mauritania and other countries with a similar ideal for femininity, women are expected to be large—large, but still weak. The ones who are really “successful” at this are too big to do anything. They just lay around all day and get fatter. And their husbands are expected to be thin, because, for men, being fat is a sign of laziness. Above all, the most significant similarity between their society and ours (I think) is the fact that the men, not the women, define beauty.
(I can almost picture Greyson’s response…bring it on, Ruback.)
Something else that struck me in this article is that despite the deliberate overfeeding, 2 out of 5 women in Mauritania are overweight, whereas in America, where it’s almost considered a sin to be obese, 3 out of 5 women are overweight. A couple months ago, Josh and I visited a class at American on economics and policy. The professor spoke about obesity as a problem that can be solved primarily through economic policymaking, rather than through the health sector. I agreed with a lot of what she said…and I think the problem could definitely be addressed by tinkering with agricultural policy. But in the end, supply does not control demand; demand creates supply. Thus, I would argue that, rather than an economic or a health problem, obesity is a social/cultural problem (or at least a combination of the three). What is needed first of all is a paradigm shift. As long as people like the Orange Shirt Guy (a guy in that class who exemplifies everything I dislike about Americans—arrogance and stupidity) laugh at people who enjoy exercise and eat potatoes instead of potato chips, it won’t matter how good our health system is or how cheap vegetables are. We will always be fatter than the Mauritanians, who would give anything to be as fat as Americans.
