Gavage

Jezebel has an excellent post up (read/watch the clips HERE) on "gavage" or the forced feeding of young girls while having their feet tortured in Mauritania. In Mauritania it is said that the size of a woman is the size a husband will have for her in his heart. Female obesity is encouraged, much like a bank-account (and famines were/are common in West Africa, so this practice doest come out of an ecological as well as social reality).

Encouraging women to become stick thin or zaftig harms women and girls. Period. If you watch the video where the little girl is crying while her mother hurts her feet so she'll eat the
milk/millet/butter porriage they use to plump up, you may want to cry. So be warned.

I have to echo Tracie's sentiment: "Why must appealing to men always be such a heavy burden on women?"