You are getting fatter and fatter

In a carefully planned experiment to gauge cultural reactions to different body types, I have intentionally decided to have my weight fluctuate up and then down and then up. The never-ending comments of "you are getting fatter and fatter" - which echo in my head to become "you are getting fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter" - are, um, perfect.

"You are fat" is one thing. It could just be a compliment. The equivalent of "you are thin" in countries and cities with over-abundant food supply. But "you are getting fatter and fatter" is like someone telling you "you are getting thinner and thinner" - it rings of truth, of actual observation over time, of being one way and then not being that way and then really not being that way. It's almost scientific. And a check-up with a nice nurse at the King Faisal Medical Center scientifically confirmed a plantain-and-beans induced rise of around five kilos from my previous I'm-sick-of-plantains-and-beans induced loss of five kilos from a few months ago.

And just in case I'm not sure, someone will give me a detailed description of how I was especially thin, say, when I came back from Botswana. And then wasn't. And then was and then, oh, no, wow, you are getting fatter.

I have been trying to gauge if "you are fat" in Rwanda is the same as "you are thin" in developed countries. I have concluded that it is not. Put political correctness aside, and read on:

Pervious studies have found that, in mate selection, the more wealthy a person feels, the more they seek a thin mate, and the poorer one feels, the more they seek a fat mate. Being thin in the US is cool because starvation is virtually non-existent and obesity is very high, especially among the lower-class. Perhaps if you can afford to take time to work out, you are probably wealthy, and so thinness is seen as attractive. If Rwanda was the reverse - obesity non-existent and starvation very high - then maybe being fat here would be like being thin in the US. But that's not necessarily the case. Food security is high, close to 100% by some accounts, and while obesity seems extremely rare, lower and middle class adults are usually not very thin. It may be that the average lower-class person in the US is far more over-weight than the average lower-class Rwandan is underweight. In New York City, women reared in the lowest socio-economic class were seven times as likely to be obese. A very quick check of Rwandan BMI certainly finds a prevalence of under-weight adults, but a very un-scienctific casual glance seems to indicate that the prevalence of under-weight adult Rwandans in rural areas, which tend to have lower incomes, is not much higher than in cities.

I have asked Rwandans if "you are fat" is a compliment. They all tell me it is not. It's not an insult, either. Just a fact. An observation. I asked Ugandans my age if being fat in Uganda is a good thing, at least in Kampala. One friend told me, "well, before you are married it is good to be thing. But you are expected to be fat when you get married." "You are expected," I asked, "or it is good to be fat when you are married?" "You are expected to be fat," I was told, "it's not really good. It's not bad, either."

I plopped myself down next to staff member who had grown up during her formative years in Kampala. "I want to be your weight," she said, "but without the collar bones." I told her that collar bones were considered attractive in much of the world. Or at least the world that does google searches on google.com. Type in "collar bones are" in Google, and the Goole Automatic Search will finish your sentence with "hot" and "attractive"and "beautiful." Because, apparently, lots of people want to reaffirm their aesthetic beliefs by Googling them.

"You have not gained weight" she assured me, when I told her I did not want to. "Well," she continued, and then said something worse: "Maybe only in your arms."

An arms race towards skinniness in the US probably increased the trend of being thin, leading to anorexia and other eating disorders. So it's not just a factor of how much food is available - it's how people relate to each other and compete, as well. And if people are trying to emulate an ideal shown on the media, then the arms-race may be quicker then in a less media-heavy country. Either way, "you are fat" is not, I think, the direct equivalent to "you are thin" in developed countries.

I learned that for Francophone Rwandans, as a general rule, sort of, being thin is a little better, and for Anglophones being curvier is better. With thick calves. This may be because the cultures France and Belgium happened to colonize had those differences, and it had nothing to do with the culture of the colonizers. But, yes, my initial reaction was "Ah, like the skinny French. And not really skinny British."

A short-term volunteer told a man his wrists were thin. He got upset and said, "When a disease comes, I will be the healthier one and I will live!" My older brother, when he was a chubby eleven year old, used to defensively respond to taunting by saying that if we were starving in a forest, he would outlive me, so there.

Finally, Jessica Simpson says that, when in Uganda, she was told she was like a cow as a compliment. In Rwanda, "you are a cow" is not a compliment so much as "you are like a small cow" is a compliment. So you have some meat. But are, you know, small.

And getting fatter and fatter.