SHOTLIST
1. B-roll Chloe catwalk spring /summer 2001
2. sot Pauline Amlam:
'If a woman is very skinny we say that she does not have enough to eat or her husband treats her badly '
3. vs Ladies shaking their behind in a dance called Mabuka
4. WS Venue-2 presenters
5. CU presenters
6. Ws the ladies on stage
7. sot Mr Pol Dokui:
'To be Miss in the rest of the world means you have to be between 1.70 and
1.68, you have to weigh between 50 and 45 kilo's, you have to have a degree, it depends on the country. Here it is free, we have the principle that beauty is in the harmony of the body. In Africa we don't measure beauty with a ruler.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'
8.. Model walks on stage
9. caw audience
10.vs models walking
11.sot Mr Pol Dokui:
'With you the white people, if a lady has rings (rolls) around her neck you call it wrinkles, we on the other hand think it is mark of beauty, the invisible chin - The teeth, that you will treat at a young age because you see it is abnormal, we think of as beautiful. You find many differences there !'
12. Western model with bare breasts
13. Winners on stage at the contest
BEAUTY PAGEANTS - AFRICAN STYLE
In Abidjan on the Ivory Coast, the likes of Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd would not be seen as beautiful. These models' stick-like frames are the opposite of what is considered desirable, as APTN discovered when we visited the Queen of the Ivory Coast beauty pageant.
Basically big is better. For much of Africa, plumpness is a sign of prosperity and being thin is seen as a sign of either poverty, disease, misery or hunger. In fact in West Africa, they even have fat farms instead of the Western world's health farms, specifically to help people gain weight.
Sponsors of the beauty pageant make it very clear that they're looking for that classic "guitar shape" and the pageant rulebook notes in detail that their ideal Queen has "a rounded, full-fleshed bottom, which should be well-developed and in movement when the woman moves."
The award ceremony, which was set up in 1999 to celebrate Africa's own traditions of beauty, is presided over by the country's cabinet ministers, and includes showings of many traditional outfits, including robes known as Boubous, and head wraps.
To show off their voluptuous figures, the contestants perform traditional dances, one of which is called the Mapuka, where the contestants lean over, stick their hips out and then swivel them.
As in the Western world, the contestants have to strut their stuff down a catwalk but unlike in the West, in Abidjan they let it all hang out and have no problem showing off the fat folds of their bellies.
The winner of the competition was contestant number twelve, Diaye Judith, who was named Awoulaba 2001 and at 90 kilos (200 pounds) is nearly twice the size of most of the Western world's biggest supermodels - which just goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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