Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

First, my apologies for the neglect on this site over the last month. I hope that the end of the school year is not too busy for all of you! For the last post (or what I think will be the last post of the year) I thought I'd write about perceptions of beauty here, because it really is quite fascinating.

Please keep in mind that most of these criteria for beauty are for the Moor/Arab culture, but you do see some overlap into the other southern cultures. However, I am most familiar with Moor culture.

Women: The first major difference that you will see in one's perception of beauty is weight. In the USA, our culture focuses on the importance of slim women's figures. Here... it is the exact opposite. The heavier you are...the more beautiful you are. As modern medicine and western culture (including TV shows, and movies)becomes more and more standard, we see this trend starting to change. Many younger women no longer subscribe to the same tendencies as the older generations. The traditional culture was that women who were very curvy showed that they did not need to do much work. In the past, and even now in the more rural areas of the country, many families still practice the tradition of force-feeding their young girls. They believe that it is so beautiful to be as heavy as possible that families will make young girls of marrying age eat and eat and eat until they literally cannot eat more without vomitting. There were and are reports of "fat camps" existing where families can send their daughters to make them beautiful for their future husbands. As mentioned previously, with modern medicine and western culture gripping the region more and more, these tendencies are starting to diminish.

Another beauty trend here is skin-color. While we in the USA tend to try to soak up the sun, here they do everything in their power to avoid it. Traditionally here black people were of the slave caste, while the "white" arabs were their masters. It is important to note that although slavery has been tecnically abolished multiple times here, there are many families that still practice it. With this past, it perhaps gives rise to the obsession of the culture with light and white skin. So much so that many women use a whitening cream on their face that is actually quite harmful and dangerous. One of Peace Corps' health projects is education on this skin lightening cream that so many women use. I'm not sure of the composition or all of the effects that the cream has on women, however I do believe that prolonged use causes wrinkles and spot on the skin.

Another aspect of beauty for women is a non-permanent tattoo like design on the feet and hands called Hennah. It is important to stress that it is never permanent, but that it stays on for days and/or weeks depending on the quality and how much contact you have with water after putting it on. It is usually a orange-ish brown paste that you put on your hands and feet in intricate designs. You then leave it on there for hours while the dye seeps into your skin to change its' color for a few days.

Men: For men it is generally most acceptable to have a very thin frame, with not much muscle. You certainly won't see men putting time aside to go lift weights at the gym. As with other aspects of culture, men have much more freedom and lee-way with the acceptable norms than women do. If you see a man who has a little bit of muscle, you certainly wouldn't think twice about it. However, that being said... I have not seen a Mauritanian man yet who was over-weight. There is such a strong cultural stigma against an over weight man (because it is feminine... not due to medical concerns or western perceptions of beauty).

I hope this at least gives you a start for what "beauty" is here, and an understading that beauty truely is a cultural perception.