Proving once again that we are not one world, comes this story about what mothers in some parts of Africa are doing to their daughters:
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (Reuters) — Worried that her daughters’ budding breasts would expose them to the risk of sexual harassment and even rape, their mother Philomene Moungang started ‘ironing’ the girls’ bosoms with a heated stone.
“I did it to my two girls when they were eight years old. I would take the grinding stone, heat it in the fire and press it hard on the breasts,” Moungang said.
“They cried and said it was painful. But I explained that it was for their own good.”
“Breast ironing” — the use of hard or heated objects or other substances to try to stunt breast growth in girls — is a traditional practice in West Africa, experts say.
A new survey has revealed it is shockingly widespread in Cameroon, where one in four teenagers are subjected to the traumatic process by relatives, often hoping to lessen their sexual attractiveness.
“Breast ironing is an age-old practice in Cameroon, as well as in many other countries in West and Central Africa, including Chad, Togo, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, just to name a few,” said Flavien Ndonko, an anthropologist and local representative of German development agency GTZ, which sponsored the survey.
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The younger a girl develops, the more likely she is to have her bosom ironed — 38 percent of girls developing breasts under the age of 11 had undergone the procedure.
The practice is most common in the Christian and animist South of the country, rather than in the Muslim North and Far North provinces, where only 10 percent of women are affected.
The survey found that in 58 percent of cases breast ironing was carried out by mothers worried that the onset of puberty could provoke sexual harassment, inhibit their daughters’ studies or even stunt their growth.
Many mothers were alarmed because an improvement in nutrition and living conditions had caused young girls’ breasts to develop earlier than ever.
The illogic of the entire practice is revealed starkly in this quote from the mother mentioned above:
“You ask me why I did it?” said Moungang. “When I was growing up as a little girl my mother did it to me just as all other women in the village did it to their girl children. So I thought it was just good for me to do to my own children.”
Quite frankly, one would have thought that barbaric thinking like this had disappeared long ago.
