“One would think that such degraded creatures as these men are would be quite incapable of appreciating female beauty, but that is not the case.  Good-looking girls are much admired and consequently frequently stolen away.”

As a matter of fact, beauty has nothing to do with the stealing of the women.  The real motive is revealed in the following passage from Brough Smyth (79): 

“A very fat woman presents such an attractive appearance to the eyes of the blacks that she is always liable to be stolen. However old and ugly she way be, she will be courted and petted and sought for by the warriors, who seldom hesitate to risk their lives if there is a chance for obtaining so great a prize.”

An Australian Shakspere obviously would have written “Fat provoketh thieves sooner than gold,” instead of “beauty provoketh thieves.”  And the amended maxim applies to savages in general, as well as to barbarians and Orientals.  In his Savage Life in Polynesia, the Rev. W.W.  Gill remarks: 

“The great requisites for a Polynesian beauty are to be fat and as fair as their dusky skins will permit.  To insure this, favorite children, whether boys or girls, were regularly fattened and imprisoned till nightfall when a little gentle exercise was permitted.  If refractory, the guardian would whip the culprit for not eating more."[115]

American Indians do not differ in this respect from Australians and Polynesians.  The horrible obesity of the squaws on the Pacific Coast used to inspire me with disgust, as a boy, and I could not understand how anyone could marry such fat abominations.  Concerning the South American tribes, Humboldt says (Trav., I., 301):  “In several languages of these countries, to express the beauty of a woman, they say that she is fat, and has a narrow forehead.”

FATTENING GIRLS FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET

The population of Africa comprises hundreds of different peoples and tribes, the vast majority of whom make bulk and weight the chief criterion of a woman’s charms.  The hideous deformity known as steatopyga, or hypertrophy of the buttocks, occurs among South African Bushman, Koranna, and Hottentot women.  Darwin says that Sir Andrew Smith

“once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope.  Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and according to Burton, the Somal men, ’are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line and by picking her out who projects farthest a tergo.  Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form.’"[116]

The notions of the Yoruba negroes regarding female perfection consist, according to Lander, in “the bulk, plumpness, and rotundity of the object.”