In Mauritania there’s a word for force-feeding little girls so that they’ll be fat enough to marry: leblouh. In French it’s gavage, the same word used for fattening geese for foie gras.
Seriously.
It starts as early as age five. Older women, the “fatteners”, fill girls with camel milk, couscous, millet and fat, with reported intakes of 14,000 to 16,000 calories a day (a healthy 12-year-old needs around 1,500). Girls who refuse are pinched, beaten, or have their toes squeezed between sticks. The goal: silvery stretch marks on the upper arms, the sign of a good match.
The logic is old and nomadic: in the desert, a plump wife proved her family could feed her. It survives mostly among the Arab-Berber Moors, especially in the countryside.
How common is it? In the 2000-2001 national health survey, 23% of Mauritanian women said they had been force-fed as children (Ouldzeidoune et al., 2013). Other estimates are all over the place, from one in five to far higher after the 2008 coup, when the military government praised a “return to tradition”. I haven’t found solid data for after that.
The modern twist is worse: pills (steroids, animal-fattening drugs) instead of milk.
The good news is that younger, urban Mauritanians increasingly want nothing to do with it.