Traditional Attenuation of Inequality: Neutral Meaning of Body Size among the Yorùbá of Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract Body size is a profound ground of inequality in modern global society. Moreover, constructions of body size are racially polarized, with blacks being reputed for venerating large body. Proceeding with a triangulation of qualitative methods, this phenomenological study featured forty-two in-depth interviews, eight focus group discussions and eighteen key informant interviews among men and women of varying body sizes in two of the six states of southwestern Nigeria. Findings reflect dominantly neutral meaning of body size among the Yorùbá. This neutrality is dominantly reflected in the literal questioning of meaning that Yorùbá attach to body size, and who becomes a king in Yorùbá land but partially neutral in acceptability of prospective son or daughter in-law. Divinity, orí (fate), ìwà (good behavior) and ọmọlúàbí (good person) are among phenomena that counts in discerning people’s worth. Meaning attached to body size is opposed to common-place attitude to body size, making this attitude to be profane while meaning is solemn. This meaning is tremendously in favour of optimum health, and attenuating inequality, for which even black societies are perpetrating in the globalized world. Traditional Yorùbá value of human person is irrespective of body size.