Islam and the Body: Female Fattening among Arabs in Niger

Popenoe, R. (1999)

Article / Letter to editor

Is there a specifically Islamic vision of the body? Given the nuanced nature of cultural understandings of the body and Islam's own variable expressions, this question is probably unanswerable, and indeed poorly phrased. Phrased another way, however, the question of the relationship between Islam and the body becomes more interesting: how do bodily practices in different Muslim societies articulate with different versions of lived Islam? My research among Arabs in remote northwestern Niger on the aesthetic of corpulent female bodies, and the practice of forcefeeding young girls to achieve it, speaks to this issue.

• Female Body

• All authors: Popenoe, R.
• Date: 1999
• Journal: ISIM Newsletter
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5 - 5
• Publisher: ISIM, Leiden