The torture of breast ironing

In Cameroon young girls and adolescents have for years been subject to a horrible torture: breast ironing. This is typically carried out by their own mothers, grandmothers and aunts, who do it in a desperate attempt to save them from a terrible future. It is so brutal that it is often compared to genital mutilation.

Breast ironing

In Cameroon when a young girl enters puberty, or even before, she is subjected to breast ironing.

It begins at times even when the child is eight years old by binding her chest very tightly, both day and night, to hide the first hint of breast, even if still very small.

Then when the breasts begin to grow and be noticed despite the tight bandage, that’s when they proceed with the ironing. Every morning, mothers and grandmothers take the girls from the family and “iron” their breasts with red-hot objects: pestles, stones, spatulas.

Once heated on the stove these objects are passed on the breasts of the girls, massaging them to make them disappear, to kill the mammary gland.

It is usually done at dawn or dusk, in a secluded place such as the kitchen, so that the father and the other men of the house won’t notice. The most common tool is the wooden pestle used to pound tubers, but grinding stones, coconut shells, ladles, spatulas and hammers heated over coals are also used. This extremely painful procedure can last from a week to several months, depending on how much the girl resists and how much the breasts “resist”. If the breasts keep protruding, the ironing is repeated even several times a day, for weeks or months.

Why iron the breasts?

Why do mothers put their daughters through to undergo this torture? In fact, they believe they are doing it for their own good.

They are convinced that the breast attracts the gaze of men, and that this will lead to early sexual intercourse and pregnancy.

In Cameroon, if a woman becomes pregnant she has to stop her studies and stay at home to look after the baby, often having to look for a job because the child’s father does not take responsibility.

This practice, however, causes excruciating pain and in the long-term it causes other damage.

In fact, it can cause breast cysts, abscesses, sometimes cancer and breastfeeding becomes difficult. Not to mention the shape of breasts that completely disappears and the resulting scars.

Then there are infections and, in the most serious cases, the destruction of one or both breasts. There are no in-depth medical studies, but doctors warn it may contribute to breast cancer: around ten cases have been reported among women who had undergone it. After childbirth it can delay milk production, endangering newborns.

And then there are the wounds you can’t see. Many girls experience the ironing as a punishment, blame themselves, and fear sex and breastfeeding.

According to a 2006 survey by German development agency GIZ together with the Cameroonian association RENATA, breast ironing affects about one girl in four in Cameroon, rising to 53% in the Littoral region around Douala, regardless of religion or economic status, but it is also practiced in Benin, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe.

The practice has also reached Europe with migrant communities. In 2016 an investigation by The Guardian estimated that around a thousand girls in the UK had been affected, and British authorities now treat it as a form of child abuse that teachers and doctors are required to report.

In Cameroon, the fight against it is led mostly by other women. RENATA, founded in 2005, brings together the so-called “aunties”: women who became mothers very young and now visit schools, churches and markets to explain to mothers that ironing their daughters’ breasts does not protect them and instead causes serious, permanent harm. As early as 2000 the UN listed breast ironing among the most overlooked forms of violence against women.

Testimonials

Carol who is 28 year old says:

When my breasts started to grow my family began to talk about it. They even talked to my neighbours and the village elders. They talked so much about it that I began to feel ashamed. Finally my mother decided to iron my breast. “If we do not, your breasts will attract men, and we know that this means pregnancy. we have to kill the breast” – she said. She used a hot stone on my right breast, then on the left, then back to the right. This went on for weeks. I suppose that her intentions were good. the breasts are what makes a woman beautiful. Today mine parents are limp, they don’t even stand up.

Doriane, 19.

I was eight years old when my mother told me to take off my shirt.” Do you already have breasts?. When a girl of your age has breasts, men look at her.”I did not understand what she was doing. Every day, sometimes even three times a day, she would iron my breasts with a hot spatula. She said it was for my own good but it was a nightmare. I noticed that the more she rubbed the more my breasts grew, and when she also noticed it she began using a stone. That was hell. it seemed that my whole body was on fire. I told everything to a consultant at school, and he tried to talk to my mother. I thought it would stop, instead she continued. She massaged and massaged. So I took my things and I went to my aunt. it hurts when I look in the mirror.

Cathy, 27 years.

The pestles remind me of childhood pain. The same stone tool that people use to crush the spice was used on me to step on my beauty as a woman and my skin. My breasts began growing when I was 10 and my family thought that ironing them would be the solution. When I got pregnant at sixteen, they became darker and when I tried to breastfeed I could only produce a dark liquid. It hurts to remember these things. I decided to forget everything and to fight against violence against women.

Associations against breast ironing

Elisabeth Mbu also underwent this treatment and now, at 29, is a member of the British charity “CAME Women and Girls Development Organisation”, which encourages young women to reject the practice and works with London’s Metropolitan Police and social services to raise awareness.

Another association made up of women victims of breast ironing, the “National Association of Aunties in Cameroon” also known as “Renata”, tries to spread the proper sex education to combat early pregnancies.

Besides being dangerous, breast ironing doesn’t even achieve its purpose: it prevents neither early sex nor pregnancy. Awareness campaigns, however, do work: in 2014 Reuters reported that the practice had fallen by 50% in Cameroon. Cameroon still has no specific law banning it.

Sources

• Breast ironing – Wikipedia