While women have, in recent years, deemed thin as synonymous with, a new trend appears to have sneaked into vogue, displacing the once yearned-for-by-men and envied-by-women skinny model. Now, the voluptuous bodies of Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are what we’re after, and this trend is certainly on the rise in Africa.
Peter Mugagga, a student at Makerere University, Kampala, explains, ‘Not that they aren’t pretty, but slimming girls look like fragile pretty little things that are good to look at but too delicate to touch.’ He notes that curvy women have a womanly vibe, ‘without any protruding bones or ribs to jab you when you embrace them.’ Real estate developer Steven Akiiki adds, ‘Slimming women show that they are overly concerned with what others think of them. They change from being a person into a consumer product seeking purchase.’
Dr Tabley Bakyaita, a health educator at the Health ministry, scoffs at weight loss in order to look like skinny celebrities, calling it a crazy wellness practice. ‘Men have never prescribed the kind of size a woman should be. Why, then, do young girls copy those exaggerated model sizes that can be risky to their lives?’ According to Dr Bakyaita, Western magazines and internet are to blame for having models’ photos with exaggerated thin bodies, ‘which our girls copy’.
Yet one person against the new trend towards curvier figures is professional model Vincent Kaliisa, who makes no apology for slimming. ‘Fashion and trends work together with our bodies,’ he says. ‘A woman is, therefore, expected to do anything possible [like slimming] to look nice.’ Yet Makerere University’s Professor of Nutrition and Bio-engineering John Muyonga advises a healthy balance: ‘It is healthy for someone to reduce or add weight as long as they remain within the ranges of the body mass index. The normal indices are always between 18.5 and 25, anything below or above that is considered abnormal.’
According to Dr Eria Olowo Onyango, a Makerere University social anthropologist, it’s not surprising that the trend is changing. ‘Culture grows through people picking and dropping certain practices,’ he says. ‘This idea of slimming is like a full circle. Some women took up the Western slimming phenomenon but after some time, we now see them go back to the original African full woman.’
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