This week I went shopping for underwear. It's the first time I have braved buying knickers in Senegal, but I thought it would be an interesting social experiment. I am still in research to find out where the latest national phrase has come from, 'salagne salagne', a word used by Youssou N'Dour in a song of the same name, so it seemed like a good part of the hunt.

One of the teenagers I hung out with last week said it was the phrase used for a woman 'who knew what to do to keep her man', and another (a man) said it could also be used for men, who should also try to do all they can to keep their woman. It is about wearing the right lingerie, having the appropriate number of bin-bin (waist beads) and burning the right kind of incense in the bedroom. But the phrase has also become a description for anything vaguely sexy, so when a woman wobbles down the street, men watching her disappear can be heard to mutter 'salagne salagne' as she goes and if a pair of sunglasses is adorned with diamante studs, 'salagne salagne' also fits. In a world where glitter = beauty, 'salagne salagne' can be heard at the moment just about everywhere.

At Sandaga market I entered one of the stall selling knickers. I wasn't prepared for a man to be doing the selling but it seems women sell bras, men sell pants.

"Oui Madame?" the stall-holder said as I entered a forest of dangling g-strings. "What do you want?"
"I just want to look," I said shyly as I leafed through a stack of nylon knickers.
"But do you want knickers," he said, holding up a massive pair of grey cotton briefs, "or do you want 'salagne salagne'?" He waved a tiny triangle of diamante-studded string in my face. I backed away.

At the next stall it was the same story. There's salagne salagne and there's something my granny might wear. What if I wanted salagne salagne but in my size? I searched for an hour through the market, men lining up along each side of the narrow alleyways which cut through the wobbly wooden shacks, hissing at anyone coming through and holding up the item of clothing they think might suit. I was offered stretchy nylon tops with incomprehensible slogans across the chest in numerous colours but always the same size: tiny size. Stretchy jeans too, but all for skinny girls. Where, I asked myself, are the clothes for the much-adored larger woman?

At HLM market the next day I found my answer.

"Hips," said the men whose stall I had stopped at. He fingered a pair of shorts, like the super-knickers which are meant to hold you in and make you smaller. But these had been pimped. They had foam padding all around them, and on the hips, extra layers of padding. My friend A., quite slim, asked the man if they were meant for people like her.

"Yes," he said, "for people with no bottom. But also for people like your friend," he said pointing to my hips.
"Even me?" I asked?
"Yes!" he said. "Even big girls like you."

That evening A. and I went to dinner with Omar and his family. We told his wife about our find. She roared with laughter and Omar looked horrified.

"Women trick men," he said, shaking his head. "They pretend they have more than they really do and the man is deceived."

What did Omar think about making your bum bigger to attract a man, we asked.

"It's not natural," he said. Breasts, bum, a woman should just be herself.