Popping pills for sexier hips

In the past, women envied curvier sisters, but modern women can rejig their hips, writes Keya Kinuthia

Mary Wangechi (not her real name) walked out of the big panelled door fuming. Two weeks earlier, she'd visited the shop on Nairobi's Luthuli Avenue to increase the size of her bottoms to male specifications. To her horror, not only did her bottoms increase in size, but her hips as well.

"I did not want bigger hips because mine were perfect. I just wanted to increase my behind to match the hips. Now see this!" she fumed.

Unfortunately, when she went back to the clinic to fix the new problem, she was given other pills and promised all would be well, only to end up losing both her newly acquired hips and her butt.

Mary is not the first to contend with results she had not bargained for. But the doctor in charge of the clinic, however, insists that like some of his clients, her expectations were unrealistic.

"They come here to increase their hips, but forget that it is an all-inclusive region and an increase in one affects both the thighs and buttocks. We can not increase the rear without increasing the thighs and the hips because something has to carry the new weight," he explained.

Booty

Traditionally, African men love well-endowed women and consider them more beautiful. Men can't help watching a well-endowed woman swaying her booty as she walks past, and in clubs, it's such women that every male eye follows. But whereas slim African women of old could only stare at their chubbier friends with envy, the modern woman can do something about it.

This obsession with increasing the size of breasts, hips or behinds or reducing them all together has seen women embrace anything that is thrown at them. With pills herbal or otherwise women are faced with seemingly easy options, but the side effects can be daunting, as Wangeci found out.

Going down the seedier parts of Nairobi, signs like Lose 15kg in two months no diet, no exercise scream in your face at every turn. In newspapers, classified ads also promise instant hip slimming or weight loss, even as others beckon slim women to beef it up in the right places.

Lucy Mwakio (not her real name) says she first experimented with slimming pills when her hips inexplicably kept ballooning when she joined high school.

"A friend introduced me to this Chinese dude that we used to go to at Hurlingham. He'd strap a belt round your waist for an hour and after a week the results would start showing. Unfortunately, the belt was expensive Sh2,000 per session! So I get pills for half that amount and pop them each time I feel uncomfortable with my weight," says Lucy.

Compared to other options, pills seem to be the runaway favourite for women who want to enhance or shrink this or that bit.

Certification

"I tried the injection," confesses Martha, a young woman we found at one of the clinics on Luthuli Avenue, "but after some time, I realised it was affecting my menstrual flow, so I stopped and returned to pills."

At one slimming clinic, a masseuse says she receives women with all sorts of needs and she has to keep them happy.

"We buy these pills, made mostly in China and Korea, and yes, they work. But only that the after-effects can be far reaching," she admits, adding, off the record, that most of the pills lack certification by relevant statutory bodies.

"They are shipped in and silently distributed. That alone should warn any right-thinking individual, but no women don't really care when they are desperate to lose or gain weight," she says.

Such women would think twice if they read the disclaimer that comes with the pills: "The doctor cannot be held liable if you gain or lose in areas you don't want to."

Incredibly, this whole booty-therapy saga started rather harmlessly, young girls stuffing rags in their clothes to look bigger. As young adults, they noticed men high on one drink or another were staring lasciviously at women's busts and cleavages, so the lasses resorted to push-up bras to keep sagging breasts firm and padded bras to enhance what mama gave them.

Padded panties

For those with unflattering posteriors, padded panties to portray a larger than normal posterior and well-rounded hips were thrown in. Problem was, they were not the real thing.

"Imagine my horror when, after lusting after her hips the whole evening over a drink, I discovered I had been royally conned!" Mutua, obviously still smarting, complained bitterly over a drink.

But unlike padded panties, which have no medical side effects, pills can be addictive because once one starts, one keeps going.

Martha, for instance, says she gets the pills at least once a month because she is too busy working and partying to exercise, but has to keep that lithe figure that she wants. The only solution seems to be pills, which she pops at will.

But her sort of beauty comes at great cost. One pill sheds excess waist fat in less than a week, but it comes with nausea, vomiting and dizziness and, in extreme cases, reduced blood cells, lower immunity and increased chances of heart failure or brain clots. Another one will increase hips only, but you risk developing diabetes and cancer in the long run. The funniest thing is most of the pills have organic and herbal, tags that are a health craze for many women.

Headache

Ashley says she has been importing herbal slimming pills because they are not locally available, and while she admits it gives her a headache getting them into the country, costs and customs included, she says she does not regret as it keeps her sane.

"Look, I have proper hips, a killer behind and breasts I am proud of, but I don't spend evenings in the gym. Instead, I spend them looking hot and getting admired!" she boasts.

But you would be mistaken to think only women want to reduce or increase certain aspects of their anatomy. Days when men worked out in the gym for that muscular frame that kills women are long gone and they are streaming into these joints in equally alarming numbers as well.

Hunky look

"Men come for pills to tone or firm their buttocks and others to widen their hips," says a doctor at one clinic in Nairobi.

Some want to increase their shoulder size in relation to their hips, a complex combination that any normal man would consider. But buttocks?!

To prove it's not a tall tale, the doctor introduced this writer to one of his patients. Alfred pops pills to firm his buttocks and thighs for that lean hunky look, which he says is a must in his trade - a trade he refused to mention. Unlike the big-bodied men who go for steroids and sweaty workouts in the gym, men like Alfred get it easy: An injection and a pill once a month.

Just like women are fascinated with big bottoms, hips and breasts, it appears some men will do anything to enhance their vitals in the bedroom. Thus, a look at the classifieds in your newspaper will reveal gems like: Men's size and power; 100 per cent power and size; vigour and power plus; firm and enlarge; instant power and so forth.

And the best part is that consultation and home delivery is free - no doubt to save the shy ones the blushes.But does this stuff realy work?

Dr Kizito Lubano says: "Indeed you can get the desired results, but the drugs are usually high in other concentrates, which affect your body. One also has to keep taking them, thus creating an addiction that can be fatal. Once you are hooked, you expose your body to other conditions, which weaken your body."

Dr Mutua Nzioka of Kenyatta National Hospital is equally scornful of the pills, saying most are not approved by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board anyway.