The hot new dance craze in the Ivory Coast is "Bobaraba," which translates to "Big Bottom." The problem? Some women are worried that their derrieres are not up to par, so they're getting black market injections for more junk in the trunk. Ivorian gynecologist Dr. Marcel Sissoko says the injections might be dangerous, "because we don't know the ingredients. It's being used without a medical prescription. The health ministry hasn't authorized this and doctors don't know what's in there, so there are risks."
There are worse risks in the Ivory Coast: Being female at all. Women are being gang-raped, abducted and forced into sexual slavery in the country — as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Amnesty International reports case after case of girls and women, ages "under 12" to 63, assaulted by armed men. Human Rights Watch records the rape of children as young as 3. Rapes are conducted by as many as 30 or 40 men, and, reports the L.A. Times, "Many women were raped so incessantly and so brutally — with sticks, knives, gun barrels, burning coals — that they died." (We suggest reading the entire article but with this caveat: Be prepared to scream or cry.) What sayeth "Bobaraba" hitmakers DJ Mix and DJ Eloh? "If a woman goes dancing and wants to take two or three treatments, no problem," DJ Mix says. "But we don't say to girls that they must take treatment to enhance your bottom, no."
'Bottom' Dance Inspires Rear Injections [UPI]
A War On Women [LA Times]