Globalization of Beauty Makes Slimness Trendy
By NORIMITSU ONISHI NEW YORK TIMES
LAGOS, Nigeria — With no success, Nigeria had been sending contestants to the Miss World pageant for years. Winners of the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria went year after year to the Miss World competition, and year after year the beauty queens performed remarkably poorly.

Then The Most Beautiful Girl of 2001, Agbani Darego, went on to clinch the Miss World title in Sun City, South Africa, last October. She became the first African winner in the contest's 51-year history.

But the perverse reality was that most Nigerians, especially those over 40, did not find the new Miss World particularly beautiful.
The story does not end there, though. In the year since her victory, a social transformation has begun to take hold across this nation, Africa's most populous.

The change is an example of the power of Western culture on a continent caught between tradition and modernity. Older Nigerians' views of beauty have not changed. But among young, fashionable Nigerians, voluptuousness is out and thin is in.

"After Agbani won, girls look up to me and ask me how to get slim," said Linda Ikeji, 22, an English major at the University of Lagos.
"Before, fat girls were the rave of the moment," said Ms. Ikeji, who is 5 feet 8, weighs 130 pounds and now finds work as a part-time model. "Some fat girls thought they had an advantage over me. But Agbani changed everything." Read more (free regi. needed)