World's Apart...

Yesterday I arrived in the gym too late to watch my much loved iDesk (a news program on CNN), and was forced to keep myself entertained with the “40 Biggest Celebrity Slim Downs” (arguably not the worst program to get motivated).

While watching women desperately trying to shrink themselves to fit into their children’s clothes, I once again realised that the obsession with being slim is a Western one. In developing countries, low fat food or sugar free drinks are rare - in many countries it is virtually impossible to get a Diet Coke, leave alone low fat milk. This is not surprising: Given that millions of people are still struggling to consume enough calories to survive, reducing calories in food really seems to be a silly idea.

While not a developing country anymore, South Africa is not a developed country yet either. It is stuck somewhere in between - it is a country of extremes.

The most noticeable example of this is income with incredible wealth, shocking poverty and not much of a middle class. Surprisingly, it is also true when it comes to weight: People are either incredibly skinny or severely overweight.

But South Africans, especially black ones, have a different attitude to weight than people in developed countries. Rather than hide their pounds under big jumpers and baggy trousers, South African ladies proudly display their curves wearing tiny skirts, tight tops, and microscopic dresses.

This is the same in most African cultures: Weight is a status symbol indicating wealth and prosperity; being slim is often associated with poverty and HIV. So African ladies (and men) drink their coffee with full cream milk and lots of sugar and proudly display their bellies and bums.

So while the African love for curves is not new to me, I wasn’t quite aware just how much they love them…

On my way to work today, I walked past a poster which immediately caught my attention. It was an advert for breast, bum and him enlargements!


Breast enlargements – yes, I have certainly heard about them…

Bum enlargements - I think I may have come across these once or twice as well…

But hip enlargements? Really…?!? Hip enlargements??? Why? And how?? And why???

But while I was still baffled about why anyone would want to pay for bigger hips, I thought of European’s getting leg extensions - an incredibly painful, expensive and most of the time completely unnecessary procedure. All of a sudden, hip extensions really didn’t’ seem that weird anymore…