In the United States there are some
things that you just don’t say to people, regardless of if it is true or not.
When a woman asks her husband, boyfriend, or friends if those jeans make her
butt look big the only acceptable answer is a big Hell No. It doesn’t matter if
those jeans make her ass look like a balloon; you lie, because you know it will
hurt her feelings and her wavering self-esteem if you tell her the truth. Unfortunately,
South Africans did not get that memo before I moved here. Since I have been
here I have been told that I am too skinny (which I was excited about), that I am
going to get fat, that I need to get fat, and that I am getting fat. People I have
never spoken to will come up to me in town to comment on my weight and then
walk away. I have tried to remind myself that the culture is different and that
I shouldn’t take anything personally, but let’s be honest ladies. If some
stranger came up to you and said “Wow, you are looking so fat today” and then
walked away, how do you not take that personally?!
Now, the last time that I went to
the doctor I was told that I had lost a little over ten pounds since I have
come to South Africa. I know that I have not gained weight because I am still
able to easily fit into the size smaller jeans that I brought from home in the
hopes that I would lose weight while I was here. I told a group of my teachers
once that comments like that make me feel really bad and that in the US you
would never say that to someone. They seemed extremely confused and told me
that getting fat means South Africa is good for me. So the fact that people
have taken it upon themselves to inform me of how my weight is looking has made
me really think about the idea of weight and beauty in different cultures.
Looking around at women in my
community you will see variations of size to the extremes. There are women who look
like they might blow away in a strong gust of wind, and then there are women
who could crush me with their thigh alone. For the most part though, women are
BIG in this country. When I am coming home from town and stuffed in the back of
the taxi, I am usually the smallest or one of the smallest women in the truck. The
trend seems to be that the older you are the bigger you are, to the point that
many women have trouble walking by the time they are in their 40s. South
Africans have serious problems with heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes,
but if you ask them about it, no one mentions weight or poor diets as the cause
of those problems. The average life span in South Africa is 52 years, but in
this country it seems that bigger is better, regardless of the repercussions
that that might have on your health.
When I watch my host mother, who is
a very large woman, I am reminded of the idea that in the olden days being
larger was a sign of wealth and higher social standing. My host mother makes a
lot of money for someone in a rural village. She has multiple small businesses
that she runs out of her house, and has a few properties in other villages that
she rents out. She also has a few orphan girls that live at her house for which
she collects grant money from the government for taking in. These girls are
basically treated like indentured servants. They fetch water from the river,
wash the clothes, mop the floors, and do most of the cooking. This allows my
host mom to basically be sedentary and eat for the majority of the day. It is
like being fat shows that she is able to eat and be lazy all day, which in this
country translates to having the money and the means to not do any work. While I
think that this lifestyle is not good and extremely unhealthy, most people seem
very happy with eating fried chicken and a loaf of bread for lunch every day,
but you never hear people telling them that they are fat.
So what does this mean for me? Are
people telling me I am getting fat as a complement, or do they just not know
that a comment like that is extremely rude? Do they think that because I am an
American that means that I should have lots of money and therefore I should be
very fat? Do they want me to be fat so they feel better about the fact that
they are extremely obese, or are they intentionally being rude? I guess it doesn’t
really matter. Being overweight does not have the same negativity associated
with it here, and people have no problem commenting on my weight regardless of
how much smaller I am than they are. Regardless of knowing that, the next time
someone casually tells me that I am looking fat today I might have to smack
them!
