Miss Awoulaba 2013 (C) poses between her runners-up during the Awoulaba beauty pageant final on March 9, 2013 in Abidjan.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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A slim contender takes part in a beauty pageant preselection ahead of the Miss Ivory Coast contest on March 22, 2013 in Anoissi in Ivory Coast<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Her use of the term “lala” is no accident. It’s a reference to “lolo”, the word used to describe voluptuous women by Ivorian musical heavyweight Meiway in his 2000 hit “Miss Lolo”. His latest smash, “Wiggle Your Bottom”, a celebration of big booties, has had the whole of Abidjan shaking their stuff in recent months.<\/p>\n
At a concert last year, Meiway told a handful of Europeans in the crowd: “You white people, you like your women flat and thin. Here, we like them big, with curves.”<\/p>\n
But the aesthetic at the Miss Ivory Coast beauty pageant is infinitely more “lala” than “lolo”.<\/p>\n
Victor Yapobi, president of the organising committee, says: “Our beauties comply to international standards: minimum height 1.68 metres (five feet six inches), 90 centimetres (35 inches) around the hips.”<\/p>\n
In Africa, “young women are becoming more and more slender”, he says, pointing out that a slim woman is still considered a marketing plus for brands.<\/p>\n
But away from the podium, old habits die hard.<\/p>\n
“Being thin is synonymous with being sickly and malnourished in African society,” laments Micheline Gueu, a candidate for Miss Ivory Coast in a regional heat in the southeastern town of Aboisso.<\/p>\n
At the other end of the scale, however, the “awoulaba” (voluptuous women in the local Baoule language) also complain that their beauty is underrated.<\/p>\n
On International Women’s Day on March 8, the “Awoulaba” beauty contest celebrating curvy women was reinstated after a seven-year lull.<\/p>\n
The crown was taken by Esteve Alexandrine N’Goran, who told the audience of a thousand that she was there to “honour the real African woman”.<\/p>\n
Emotional after her victory, the 38-year-old business woman and mother-of-three said that she wanted to show that women like her were both “beautiful” and “comfortable with themselves”.<\/p>\n
“Roundly Beautiful”, an organisation set up in Abidjan in 2009 to support plus-sized women, lent its backing to the event. The group aims to “rid big women of their complexes” according to its president, Djeneba Dosso.<\/p>\n
But Dosso admits that curves are not just a question of aesthetics. Ivorian women “don’t exercise and eat badly” she said, so her group encourages larger women to break bad habits.<\/p>\n
Celebrated Ivorian artist Augustin Kassi is an inspiration to many. Since 1985 he’s been painting “fat women” as he describes them, in bright, joyful works of art.<\/p>\n
A consistent opponent of what he sees as “cultural alienation”, for him Miss Ivory Coast is a symbol of the “voluntary denigration of African beauty”.<\/p>\n
He advocates diversity.<\/p>\n
“The world is made up of different things” he says, paintbrush in hand. “It’s a rainbow.”<\/p>\n