<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"I was making dinner the other day, listening to NPR, and I stood there chopping carrots and onions for a salad when I heard about a trend among women in Jamaica that made my jaw drop. To get larger hips and rounder bottoms, many Jamaican women have reportedly begun taking pills that farmers use to fatten up poultry ... I was fascinated by a recent NPR &amp;quot;The Kitchen Sisters&amp;quot; report about the beauty and body image trends in Jamaica, where bigger hips and rounder bottoms are prized. Nothing wrong with that, but it&amp;#x27;s what some women are doing to get this so-called &amp;quot;idealized body type&amp;quot; that has people talking. &amp;quot;Some girls, in order to be more attractive to the male, they get themselves into the use of chicken pills. Chicken pills are the same pills farmers give to make the chickens grow faster,&amp;quot; says Carol Turpin of St. Catherine, Jamaica, who is the head of a 4-H Club there. &amp;quot;Women take the chicken pills to get broader hips and bigger bottoms,&amp;quot; says Carol&amp;#x27;s son Jason. &amp;quot;In our Jamaican culture, we love a girl that has a lot of shape.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Most males, they love to see women with big bottoms. The whole idea of Coca-Cola bottle shape,&amp;quot; Carol continued. &amp;quot; &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t want a meager woman,&amp;#x27; that&amp;#x27;s how the men would speak. ... They&amp;#x27;re figuring if you look meager, you look poor, in the sense that you&amp;#x27;re not being taken care of.&amp;quot; Carolyn Cooper, professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, goes on to say that in Jamaica, &amp;quot;big bottoms&amp;quot; equal &amp;quot;power.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If you have no meat on your bones, the society can&amp;#x27;t see your wealth, your progress, your being,&amp;quot; she says. The arsenic-laced pills, which have been around since the 1990s, are illegal, but are sold openly online and in farm-supply stores in Jamaica, and health experts say they may have frightening health consequences (cancer being one). Drastic and scary? Yes (and it makes me think that Jamaica needs more health education if girls are self-medicating like this without knowledge of consequences). But not so distant from the crazy things women in the U.S. (and around the world) do to diet and change their natural body shape, in my view. Thoughts on this news? P.S. And, here&amp;#x27;s what women are doing in the US: cosmetic surgery to get ... dimples. And, the healthy body image crusade I really love. More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering or logging in to Glamour.com! Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;#x27;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage. Follow us on Twitter! Sign Up for Body By Glamour! Photo: Jupiter"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2010/03/body-image-around-the-world-ja>