There is a confusing issue. Many older women in Polynesia are huge, and wear these awful Mother Hubbard dresses that the missionaries brought in to cover up the previously naked natives. I had been told that Polynesian men like their women on the large side, and that being fat is regarded as a good thing, not the social stigma it is in the fat-free consciousness of the Western world: I thought this was a particularly healthy attitude. There's only one odd thing: Miss Tahiti is a gorgeous, slim girl, which was showed in the local TV program. And the girls who shake their hips at the dance contests are hardly what one would call overweight. Somewhere between young girl and old woman there occur a metabolic change of immense proportions, literally, and it's weird.