Daily Dispatch

Black boys like their women big

- By NIVASHNI NAIR

URBAN black schoolboys like big girls‚ and they cannot lie.

The boys from several high schools revealed to Primose Manyathi that they preferred their girlfriend­s and future wives to be fat.

Manyathi is a master’s degree graduate in dietetics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Her research aimed to establish how male preference­s in body weight were leading to a high prevalence of obesity among urban black South African women.

The teenage boys told Manyathi that they preferred their sisters to have a normal body mass index (BMI) for health reasons.

But their preference changed for their love interests‚ who they wanted to have “a normal weight to an overweight shape”. They cited sex appeal as the main reason for this.

They were divided on their preference­s for their mothers.

“Boys from one school preferred their mothers to have a normal BMI as it symbolised health‚ while scholars from another school preferred their mothers to be obese as they thought that was a healthy shape‚” Manyathi said.

Manyathi said her findings required further investigat­ion among black men during later stages of their lives to get a full picture of body size preference­s.

She graduated on Thursday and plans to enrol for a doctorate in food security next year. — DDC

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