Feeding Desire Popenoe Analysis

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Today, the perception of female beauty and sexuality varies significantly, where the dominant western view is based on the “fitness” of the body, characterized by a thin waist, large breasts, and so on. However, in Feeding Desire, Rebecca Popenoe draws attention to an absolutely different view as she talks about the traditional stereotypes and standards related to Azawagh Arab women. Contrary to our values, they have unusual standards, defined by fatness. Popenoe presents the causes and has a good point; but although her position sounds logical, supported by evidence, I do not think that her claims are necessarily correct. She stresses that the fattening process is mainly about socializing sexuality, but I feel like it is more about social status – sexuality should be secondary to the social status. Popenoe looks at the fattening process in “wider cultural values and social structures”…show more content…
Popenoe says, “It is in marriage that…individual desires [are] fulfilled, and the central tensions and challenges of Azawagh Arab culture [are] played out, especially those of sexuality” (Popenoe 98). However, it is otherwise visible that sexuality has a minor role. For women, she says that “in the crudest, most simplistic terms…[they] want material things,” and that they claim that “the men bring us what we will eat” where “boys’ work is head work; girls’ work is stomach work” (Popenoe, 111). For men, under cultural logics, “guarding honor and maintaining power [and] the power of milk and blood” are listed (Popenoe, 81, 76). Another benefit is that they can emphasize their social status by choosing a fat wife, because this would suggest that the husband has married a woman from a higher class and can therefore maintain her standards of
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