Why Do African Men Prefer Voluptuous Women?

The intense advertising pressure from Western media eventually imposed Western beauty standards on African mentalities, and from Kinshasa to Lomé, Naomi Campbell became the ideal of beauty. However, collective consciousness has always recognized that African men appreciate curvy women. This African beauty standard had been officially relegated to the background by those concerned. With the growing influence of mentalities copied from Western models, Africans no longer dared to publicly admit their preference for women with generous curves. Western advertising had established a beauty norm where thinness was idealized, and from Kinshasa to Lomé, the model of beauty was that of international fashion models. As a result, young African women, and even older ones, who were naturally endowed with a large bust or voluptuous body, developed complexes or, at the very least, a certain unease. The pursuit of thinness led – and sometimes still leads – many African women to extreme dieting, inspired by women's magazines or grandmother's recipes that had supposedly worked for a neighbor. This trend of idealizing thinness began to change in the late 1980s. It was at this time that a certain influence of the "Black is Beautiful" movement from the USA began to reach Africa, notably through American music. African men then began to publicly return to their old beauty standards concerning Black women. In reality, voluptuousness as a beauty criterion for Black women coexisted with Western standa