Body Imaginings

Staying at the Volunteer Abroad house in Accra is great, though I must admit it's a little strange to find myself surrounded by white people, Canadians no less.

The majority of the volunteers staying in Accra right now are girls between 18 and 22, and they spend a great deal of time obsessing about their weight. Have they gained weight? Where have they gained weight, and when? Did they lose weight from other parts of their bodies? Are they just retaining water? The food is so oily! Why oh why are their stomachs bloated? Oh, how can they go back to Canada looking like this?! (I shouldn't make too much fun, I was worse than them at their age).

Africans don't have these hang ups in the same way. When I was in Yako I attended the Miss Puge-Bedre competition, which literally means Miss Big Woman. The winner weighed 120 kg, close to 300 pounds. Burkinabes admitted that 300 pound is a little excessive, but there is a deep appreciation for well-built women in West Africa. They are strong, healthy, and impervious to life's difficulties and dangers. All of the tailors here have postets of women modelling the various fashions they can sew for you, and not one of those models has an hourglass figure. When people here tell me I've gained weight, I take it as a complement because it means they think I look good.

And that is the point I'm trying to make. So much of our relationship with our bodies is based on what we imagine our weight signifies. Our body image - that mixture of self-perception and self-esteem - depends utterly on the meaning we attach to weight. If we live in a place where love handles are a sign of health and wealth, then their presence ceases to be a problem.

I think the biggest difference between Africans' and North Americans' relationships with their bodies is that Africans tend to accept their bodies as they are and not sweat it. North Americans almost always want to change something, and our relationships with our bodies are so often tainted by dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and envy/resentment of others' figures. Our campaigns to convince girls that every body is beautiful don't work because, as a culture, we don't believe it.

The idea behind Miss Puge-Bedre was to celebrate everybody, and to make sure the African body image keeps going strong.