By Denton Josey, Page Editor
Nothing would be better than marrying a fat woman.
This is what my television told me. I used to think television was a waste of time. I still do, but there is a little slice of redemption in the form of the Discovery Channel in High Definition. Thanks to Discovery HD, it matters not what is on the screen; whatever is projected is captivating.
You can see things better than in real life. All the dots assumed to be flies in any TV show or movie? In HD you can count each of the thousands of lenses on their eyes.
So when I walked by the living room the other day, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the television. Today, my TV was telling me I would be learning about the Hima tribe in Uganda.
To the Hima, big is beautiful. Fat is fantastic. Quantity is quality. To them, Kirstie Alley was more attractive before she lost that weight.
The Hima brides have such an abundance of beauty that beauty is too small a word to describe them; try pulchritudinous. I know this because I watched Fat Fiancees; that’s the name of the show about the bountiful Hima brides.
I am not making this up. This is what I learned from the show. I am certain there is more to this people, but Discovery was emphasizing this aspect.
Unlike American culture, the Hima achieve plentitude without the McDonald’s value menu.
I watched a young woman sit in a hut and chug gourds of milk under the stern eye of her grandmother. In a calm and quiet voice, the grandmother would speak to the lactose-embracing young woman, “Drink your milk. If you don’t, I’ll beat you.” Then the grandmother gave her a slight tap with the stick and turned to smile at the camera. The girl, looking distraught and quite full, kept drinking.
I don’t know the exact amount that fits in the gourds, but they seem to hold a lot of liquid. Grandmother forced the young woman to drink about seven gourds a day. It seems like the Hima women spend as much time getting fatter as most women do trying to avoid it.
Discovery also gave me a glimpse into the mind of the men seeking women. Single man after single man told the cameras what they were looking for in a wife: “I hope that I find a fat wife,” one man said. “There is no such thing as a fat woman who is ugly. Just as cows are not ugly if they are fat, the same goes for women. In fact, women and cows are a lot alike.”
What’s so cool about a woman worth her weight in gold if she’s only a size six? Why not a wife worth her weight in cows? The show went on to explain that a man’s status is improved by having a great wife. And by great I mean it like the Titanic was a ‘great’ boat.
I wonder if, in their culture, the young men are told to look past the physical, because “one day your young and beautiful wife might get old and lose all that weight.”
The nice thing about non-fiction TV is I usually think about what I watched and how it applies to my life. I’m not sure how learning about Ugandan tribes and their views of beauty helps me become a better person, but I guess expanding my horizons is good in and of itself sometimes.
Leave it to the Hima; they know a thing or two about expanding things.
