Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society » Fattening the Women of Tabar

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December 6th, 2006

Fattening the Women of Tabar

A bizarre ritual from the 1950s depicted in Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi’s 1962 “shocumentary” Mondo Cane:

On Tabar, an island in the Bismark archipelago off the coast of Papua New Guinea, women were locked up in wooden cages and fattened with tapioca in preparation for marriage to the local chief, Utame Alunda, “famous all over the islands for his physical power and his odd personality.” The fattening process could take months. Alunda’s favorite wife weighed in at 150 kilograms (331 pounds) and gave him 10 children. Alunda himself was a svelte 34 kilograms (75 pounds). We have no idea whether this practice continues today.

Update: There has been some debate about whether this video is a hoax or not. Alex Boese at the Museum of Hoaxes weighs in:

The maker of Mondo Cane was accused of staging footage, and taking customs wildly out of context, but most of the material was true. After all, there’s no shortage of bizarre human behaviors in the world. And, as far as I know, Melanesian culture did, in the past, include the custom of wife fattening. The BBC has an article about wife-fattening in current day Mauritania. Different part of the world, but same idea.

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