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Chicken Hips
Chicken Hips
by Catherine Pigott That night, everyone danced to welcome
the baby. Women swiveled their broad hips,
The women of the household clucked and used their hands to emphasize the
disapprovingly when they saw me. It was the roundness of their bodies. One needed to be
first time I had worn African clothes since my round and wide to make the dance beautiful.
arrival in tiny, dusty Gambia, and evidently There was no place for thinness here. It
they were not impressed. They adjusted my made people sad. It reminded them of things
head-tie and pulled my lappa, the ankle- they wanted to forget, such as poverty,
length fabric I had wrapped around myself, drought and starvation. You never knew
even tighter, “You’re too thin,” one of them when the rice was going to run out.
pronounced. “It’s no good.” They nicknamed
me “Chicken-Hips.”
I began to believe that Africa’s image of the
perfect female body was far more realistic
I marveled at this accolade, for I had never than the long-legged leanness I had been
been called thin in my life. It was something conditioned to admire. There, it is beautiful
I longed for. I would have been flattered if – not shameful – to carry weight on the hips
those ample-bosomed women hadn’t looked and thighs, to have a round stomach and
so distressed. It was obvious I fell short of heavy, swinging breasts. Women do not
their ideal of beauty. battle the bulge, they celebrate it. A body is
not something to be tamed and molded.
I had dressed up for a very special occasion
–the baptism of a son. The women heaped The friends who had christened me Chicken-
rice into tin basins the size of laundry tubs, Hips made it their mission to fatten me up. It
shaping it into mounds with their hands. Five wasn’t long before a diet of rice and rich, oily
of us sat around one basin, thrusting our stew twice a day began to change me. Every
fingers into the scalding food. These women month, the women would take a stick and
ate with such relish, such joy. They pressed measure my backside, noting with pleasure
the rice into balls in their fists, squeezing its gradual expansion. “Oh Catherine, your
until the bright red palm oil ran down their buttocks are getting nice now!” they would
forearms and dripped off their elbows. say.
I tried desperately, but I could not eat What was extraordinary was that I, too,
enough to please them. It was hard for me believed I was becoming beautiful. There
to explain that I come from a culture in which was no sense of panic, no shame, no guilt-
it was almost unseemly for a woman to eat ridden resolves to go on the miracle grape-
too heartily. It was considered unattractive. and-water diet. One day, I tied my lappa tight
It was even harder to explain that to me across my hips and went to the market to
thin is beautiful, and in my country we buy beer for a wedding. I carried the crate of
deny ourselves food in pursuit of perfect bottles home on my head, swinging my hips
slenderness. slowly as I walked. I felt transformed.
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Chicken Hips
walls and I could see women watching
In Gambia, people don’t use words such as themselves. I sensed that even the loveliest
“cheating,” “naughty or “guilty” when they among them felt they were somehow
talk about eating. The language of sin is not flawed. As their aerobics instructor barked
applied to food. Fat is desirable. It holds out commands for arm lifts and leg lifts, I
beneficial meaning of abundance, fertility pictured Gambian women pounding millets
and health. and dancing in a circle with their arms raised
high. I do not mean to romanticize their rock-
hard lives, but we were hardly to be envied
My perception of beauty altered as my body as we ran like fools between two walls to the
did. The European tourists on the beach tiresome beats of synthesized music.
began to look strange and skeletal rather
than “slim.” They had no hips. They seemed
devoid of shape and substance. Women I We were a room full of women striving to
once would have envied appeared fragile reshape ourselves into some kind of pubertal
and even ugly. The ideal they represented ideal. I reverted to my natural stage: one of
no longer made sense. yearning to be slimmer and most fit that I
was. My freedom had been temporary. I was
home, where fat is feared and despised.
After a year, I came home. I preached my It was time to exert control over my body
new way of seeing to anyone who would and my life. I dreaded the thought of people
listen. I wanted to cling to the liberating belief saying “she’s let herself go.” If it returned to
that losing weight had nothing to do with Africa I am sure the women will shake their
self-love. heads in bewildered dismay. Even now I
sometimes catch my reflection in a window
and there voices come back to me. “Yo!
Family members kindly started suggesting Chicken-Hips!”
that I might look and feel better if I slimmed
down a little. They encouraged me to join an
exercise club. I wandered around the malls Source: Conrad, R. (1999). Chicken Hips. In The Act of
in a dislocated daze. Writing: Canadian Essays for Composition (5th ed., pp.
195–197). McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
I felt uncomfortable trying on clothes that
hung so eloquently on the mannequins. I
began hearing old voices inside my head:
plaid makes you look fat… you’re too short
for that style…vertical stripes are more
slimming… wear black”. I joined the club.
Just a few weeks after I had warn a lappa
and scooped up rice with my hands, I was
climbing into pink leotards and aerobics
shoes. The instructor told me that I had
to set fitness goals and “weigh in” after
my work outs. There were mirrors on the
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