Where Does All the Food Go?

On body size and Nigerian beauty standards

As a thin woman in Nigeria with an appetite much larger than my waistline, I was constantly forced to answer the question: where does all the food go?

By Rejoice Isaac

As a child, I did not know what particular category — slim, skinny, or thin — I fit into. Adults in my neighbourhood called me names. These depended on their mood: when they were cheery, I was Agbani Darego, after the famous model, often shortened to Agbani, because of my body size, almond-shaped eyes and mesorrhine nose. If they were feeling prickly and wanted to make fun of me, I was no longer a model but “Alika 7-Up”, a local name for Fido Dido, the lean-limbed character used to advertise the soda. Other times, they called me broom or twig. Then they would ask if I was eating at all, and if I was, where the food was going.

I did not take any of these jibes to heart, mostly because other girls my age were not so different from me: lithe, with beaded braids and flowery or patterned gowns. I was fed well, enjoying a light breakfast before school mornings, sliced bread slathered with mayonnaise and a steaming mug of milk and Milo, Ovaltine, or Bournvita. Lunch was always eba and soup, dinner ranged from fried potato and eggs, to spaghetti or macaroni, to yam prepared in a variety of ways. 

I loved the meals, but little things seemed disconcerting, and I would focus on those instead of simply eating. I hated chopped onions and tomatoes weakened by heat, and I took great pains to sift them out of the jollof rice and tomato stew before eating. My mother did not understand why I hated vegetables softened by cooking, and her arguments for why I should eat them always seemed to trump my complaints. Whenever she caught me sifting onion from rice, she would say,  “Onions are good for your eyes — eat your onions”.” 

Beyond my eyes, though, my parents were concerned about my body weight. I was not a sickly child, but I hated taking drugs in any form and hid them when no one was watching. “Eat well so you won’t fall sick,” my mother constantly reminded me. They considered a robust appetite my ticket to health.

*

Childhood flew past quickly. The girls whom I felt some sort of kinship with because we looked the same began to fill out, their chests and thighs growing at a faster rate than mine. Soon, they began to look like my aunties, and their choice of clothing, majorly handled by their mothers, took on an adult feminine turn. Their blouses and gowns accentuated these changes, which made me acutely aware of how my body lagged. My chest budded quite alright, but not just as fast as theirs, and it made me sad. I became ashamed of my body.

My first growth spurt occurred when I was 12, between intense bouts of malaria, a measles infection, chicken pox, and sporadic nose bleeds. It seemed as though my body become a magnet for ailments. However, between them, I managed to secure menarche and added a few inches to my height and hips. All of this occurred in a boarding school, where I disliked everything from the whistling pines to the food. The food. Portions were too little, and barely had any taste. 

Sunday breakfast after chapel was “tea”, coloured water really, with eight pieces of Oxford Cabin biscuits. Lunch was fried rice, cooked to fit its description, with a piece of meat no larger than a thumb. Dinner was yam porridge — cubed pieces of yam cooked with oil, crayfish, seasoning and other condiments. No student received more than two pieces of yam. 

At age thirteen, I switched schools because we moved houses. I was in a day school this time, where I went from home, but they fed us lunch in school, and we were mandated to return our plates empty. 

The food at my new school tasted better. We got moderate portions, extra if we liked, paired with a piece of fruit. A banana with spaghetti cooked in tomato sauce, an orange with bean porridge and a piece of fried fish, an orange with eba and ogbono soup. I always spied fat colourless lobes of onion in the meals they served, but my previous experiences with my mother equipped me for The Swallow. When I shoved the onions or tomatoes in my mouth, I swallowed them with water the same way pills are taken. I teared up every time I did this with my onions, but it was better than gagging after chewing them, particularly when people were watching. 

*

At fourteen, I moved again, to live with an aunt. She was warm and friendly, but this did not displace her disciplinarian arc. Her meals were relentless in presenting my dilemma — every cooked meal, except soup, had onion rings. She maintained that onions gave food life, and towered over me while I painfully swallowed them. I couldn't bring myself to chew. 

My food portions were visibly larger than what I was used to, which I was grateful for, but I couldn't seem to finish them no matter how hard I tried. 

“Nobody wastes food in my house, finish that food now-now,” was a constant thing my aunt told me. 

“Don’t you want to look like your mates, look at so-and-so, see how fine she is, she is your age mate.” 

“You want to keep looking like you're not eating good food.”

In truth, I wanted to gain weight and fill up the dresses given to me. Nigerian beauty standards place women with plump bodies, well-rounded thighs, toned calves and full breasts at the forefront. In some cases, this is because size can be conflated with affluence; the more flesh you have, the better off you must be. Rotundity is also associated with female fertility across several Nigerian tribes, including mine, the Igbo. We call this body type nma — a chubby look. Every other body shape pales in comparison; size-zero bodies are relegated to the rear.

Illustration by Zoë Johnson.

This standard is perpetuated in pop culture. Nigerian fashion magazines feature very few slim or petite women.  In Afrobeat lyrics, the ideal woman’s breasts and bum exceed every other part of her body and leave people drooling in her wake. The chorus of Bum Bum by Nigerian singer Davido makes this explicit:

Fatty bumbum biggie bumbum / this your bumbum ibadi re gbon gbon

Partly written in Yoruba, it loosely translates to “this your waistline rotates very well”.

These standards have implications beyond aesthetics. Bigger women are considered more mature and ready for marriage, which is important in Nigeria, as their bodies are considered capable of childbearing. Young women have to present themselves as wife material, and looking the part makes it easier to marry above one’s social standing, have a grand wedding, and achieve financial security. This can put a lot of pressure on young women who don’t fit the mould. 

The mould was often laid out for me literally. Ready-made dresses sold in shops across Nigeria are designed with larger women in mind and always have to be amended to suit other body types. My aunt purchased my dresses in intentionally large sizes, especially at the upper arms, waistline and lower body region, giving me a sack-like appearance. While I tested them in dressing rooms, using the waist belts to give them some semblance of shape, the vendor would try to reassure me and my aunt that one day I would grow and be able to fill it out. My aunt would nod in agreement, making me turn this way and that. 

These incidents gave me some hope that the kilograms I needed were on their way, I just needed to will them into existence by eating more food. More food meant I would gain weight, so I ate until I felt my throat constrict, swallowing more often than I chewed. Sometimes, after going to bed, I would toss and turn uncomfortably till I threw up everything I ate. This continued for months, until I decided to stop forcing so much food into my stomach. Stuffing myself with food and throwing up afterwards defeated the whole purpose of eating. It always left me hungry, and I did not enjoy the food. 

Eventually, I discovered how to eat, eating just enough to sate my appetite without causing nausea: I began to split large portions in two. 

*

Years passed by and weight gain still eluded me. By eighteen, the snide remarks I got about my body became a multi-layered obstacle that eroded my self-esteem. Older women at home and in church pointed out that if I didn't gain weight soon, it would be hard for me to attract suitors. Some said if I attracted suitors by some miracle, my hips were not fully developed for childbirth. When I was in a group of girls and we walked past men, I knew the whistles and catcalls were not for me.

Boys my age commented that the only remarkable thing about me was my face and that my body still looked like that of a twelve-year-old. My younger siblings surpassed me in weight and height, and whenever we went out together, people thought I was the youngest of the family. 

With all of this, I fixated my grievances on my body and thought about the possible reasons why it refused to change.

I must have offended a benevolent spirit and being stuck physically is its retribution.

I should be nicer to people, so the offended spirit will release my much-needed growth spurt. 

I've been nice since forever, and I haven't received my growth spurt. 

I guess I'll have to wait for second puberty.

At nineteen, I started my first year in university. For the first time, I was truly alone and in charge of my matters, including what I ate and wore. It came with a flurry of emotions; it seemed blissful that no one monitored what I ate, the size of my food portions or what I wore. It was also overwhelming, with the constant struggle of deciding what to eat and choosing clothing that suited the environment and fit my body. 

Living in a dormitory with women from different backgrounds exposed me to new information. Across the African continent, Nigerian women place the highest importance on beauty and aesthetics; from my roommates, I learnt that there were boob-firming pills, breast enlargement pills, butt enlargement creams and more. There were even weight-gain syrups made from herbs and other ingredients that induced weight gain. The products promised visible changes within weeks, with weight gain “in the right places”. Business profiles touted before-and-after photos of slim women in ill-fitting clothing transformed into hourglass visions in dresses that clung to their form, enhancing every contour. It seemed as though everything about them changed. 

The comment sections of these pages were filled with people asking for product prices and how to take them. Apparently, these supplements spurred hunger, invoking an insatiable appetite in anyone who took them. While their primary result was weight gain, they also introduced bloating and addition in undesired places, bringing about a double chin and rolls of fat around the neck and stomach. The same businesses also sold products like slimming or detox tea to dissipate newly procured unwanted fat. Even at 19, I was wary of giving in to the urge to please the male gaze. While I wanted to gain weight, I did not want to relapse into an unrecognizable version of myself. I let the idea perish. 

*

As I get older, I  have gradually learned to shed these stereotypes from my psyche. Listening to Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie has made me reinvent the way I view likability and beauty standards. Setting and achieving academic and career milestones has boosted my self-esteem. Working for my money has granted me independence on varied levels and has helped me make informed decisions. While my family members, especially my aunt, still complain about the small portions of food I eat, they have made peace with the fact that I am no longer a child, and I can make choices for myself. The subject of marriage comes up during family gatherings, and I clearly state that while I do not abhor the prospect of marriage, I would not tweak my money by force-feeding myself to gain weight and look attractive. I constantly remind myself that they, family and society in general, do not govern my body. I am free to make well-suited choices on its behalf. 

These days, I’ve replaced The Swallow with The Vanishing Act. I dice my onions finely so they aren't visible in my meals. I blend tomatoes alongside peppers. Other vegetables I don't particularly like get incorporated into meals in tiny, chopped bits. I have discovered that I like home-made meals with a generous helping of scotch bonnet peppers, especially Indigenous dishes that require ample time and effort for their preparation: Ugba, nkwobi, afang soup paired with fufu, egusi soup with the same, yam and pepper soup, plantain porridge, abacha, ukwa.

I prepare and eat these at my own pace, so I don't feel the need to throw up afterwards. I’ve been liberated from nausea and dread around dinner time. The struggle to buy clothes remains. Ready-made dresses are two sizes bigger than what would suit me; I wear M, but adult sizes come in L, XL, and XXL in most shops. So I thrift frequently, and hunt for dresses that suit my body well. I amend bigger dresses so they don't look like sacks. 

I wonder what it would be like to reimagine beauty standards in Nigeria. How many other women suffer under the weight of burdensome comments, and unpleasant eating habits? I still get queried about my imaginary suitors and what they would say about my body — if they'd like it, if they'd think it suitable for bearing their children. But my body has carried me faithfully for two decades and some. There is no need to make it morph into shapes a certain demographic of suitors would like, to my own detriment. They are just men, and men are not oxygen.

My body works for me now; it doesn't reject the food I give it, a man’s preferences or a woman’s pressure doesn't govern the choices I make for it, and I look pretty in the dresses I wear. This is a miracle in itself. 

Rejoice Anodo is a creative writer and freelance journalist. Her work explores history, culture, feminism, and women's rights.