In Mauritania, where big is beautiful and stretch marks are sexy, young girls are force-fed up to 16,000 calories a day to prep for marriage

In Mauritania, where big is beautiful and stretch marks are sexy, young girls are brutally force-fed a diet of up to 16,000 calories a day — more than four times that of a male bodybuilder — to prepare them for marriage

It sounded like summer camp. "You're going on vacation to the desert to meet other girls and eat sweet food," Tijanniya Mint Tijani's mother told her. Tijanniya was excited. "She said that by the time I returned home, I'd be a beautiful woman."

Ten days later, Tijanniya, 14, a sporty student from the town of Atar in the West African country of Mauritania, is eating breakfast with five other girls, ages 7 to 12, in a cramped sandstone hut deep in the Sahara Desert. Her stomach is already bloated from huge quantities of goat's milk and oily couscous, but the meal is not over. The next course is a pint of pounded millet mixed with water. Tijanniya chokes down the thick gruel — she has no choice. An older woman dressed in pink robes threatens to beat her with a long cane if she refuses. Worse, if she throws up, the woman will make her eat her own vomit. Outside, a strong wind whips sand into strange, phantasmagoric shapes. The girls have been sent to this desolate spot near Atar to endure the practice of leblouh — intensive force-feeding. "The aim is to feed them until their bodies blow up like balloons," says Aminetou Mint Elhacen, 50, the woman wielding the cane.

The ideal of feminine beauty in Mauritania, a country one-and-a-half times the size of Texas and blanketed in desert, is like America's cult of superthinness in reverse. Mauritanian tradition holds that among women, rolling layers of fat are the height of sexiness. The preference originated centuries ago among the Moors, nomadic Muslims of Arabic and Berber stock who make up two-thirds of Mauritania's 3.1 million people. To the ancient Moors, a fat wife (much like fat livestock) was a symbol of a man's wealth, proof that he had enough riches to feed her generously while others perished in the drought-prone terrain.

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