The Kalabari Tribe

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? Or has culture molded these beliefs? This picturesque woman we see in the United States may not be an interchangeable beauty in other areas of the world. Whether you realize or not, one’s culture significantly sets the ideals of beauty, and these ideals can be particularly different due throughout countries, cities, villages, etc.  The criteria may have come from changing times or through historical references, and origin, but they must all be considered to understand others views.

An example of a culture who really opposes the U.S. and western countries ideals of beauty are the Kalabari; an ethnic group residing in Niger River.  This distinct subgroup culture of West Africa idealizes this female appearance known as Iria, celebrating a certain way of dress and body modification. There ideal of a fuller figured woman, hardly close to the American ideal of a thin fit body, resonates from the idea of having the qualities of a child bearing and rearing woman. This represents beauty and maturity in their culture. These two pictures below show a good representation of the American ideal beauty against the Kalabari beauty.

Now which is more beautiful, is in the eyes of the beholder by understanding that a persons cultural beliefs and ideas of beauty led to that decision. There is no answer suitable answer to which one is correct it all comes down to what you come to know as “beauty”.