A lesson in Feminine Behaviour

I am not usualy a Monday night blogger. I seem to prefer to release my thoughts sometime around Friday afternoons or early evenings. There's something about the weekend that brings forth fresh doses of inspiration. However, I was motivated to write this particular post because I saw that there was a need to correct certain misconceptions that many men have about the female folk. Yes, I am aware of the fact that no blog post could capture concisely all the false impressions men have about women, or vice versa. I however intend to limit the content of this post to one specific issue. Why women dress the way that they do.

Listen up guys, you need to understand that while yes, it’s true that women enjoy being complimented about the way we look by men, the real reason why we spend a fortune, an obscene about of time, and uncountable hours in the markets, malls, boutiques, online, scouting for new tailors, and generally priping in front of a mirror is indeed far more complex.

I will boldly affirm that there are three major reasons why women take such care with their appearances. Not all of them have to do with looking for a boyfriend/husband.

I set out below to state and make attempt to explain in a comprehensive manner, what I call the ‘Big Three’ motivators behind a female’s fabulous outfit:

       Women Dress to feel good about Themselves:
                         

                                

The truth is, there are a lot of beautiful women out there. If you’re petite, dark skinned and cute, there’s always a voluptuous, light skinned beauty round the next corner, whose looks may be at par with yours, but who you are likely to feel intimidated by because she represents a type of beauty that is so vastly different form your own.  One way you can outdo her (at least in your mind) is through your impressive style. In other words, if you feel you “baffed” up more than her, you’ve won, no matter how much prettier than you she is. Besides, nothing beats the feeling of walking into a room full of people confident that you look good and are appropriately dressed for the occasion. Feeling like you’re not has the tendency to wreck havoc on your self esteem, no matter how fashion unconscious you consider yourself.

 

        Women Dress to annoy/intimidate other women:

Most of the time, only another woman will know when she sees you exactly what brand of expensive weave you have on, or that those ridiculously high heels with the bright red under soles are $650 Christian Loubouton’s, or that the suit you’re wearing is a custom made Chanel, and that the purse swinging from your shoulders is a limited edition Chloe Paddington Bag.

The moral of the story, most women will admit, is that it feels good to oppress other women.  All women have experienced at one time or the other the satisfying feeling of having another woman stare at your amazing hair do/wristwatch/jewelry with envy. A few bold ones will even come up and ask you where you got yours, you smile confidently and depending on your mood tell them the truth, of claim to have developed fashion amnesia-you’re so sorry but you simply can’t remember. Then you spend the rest of your day with an extra bounce to your step.

                    

        Women dress to impress men:

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Yes. Sometimes women dress to impress men. It really is that simple. No long explanation required.

Cheers 

How to Spot a Bad Idea

“Never hold in your farts, they travel up your spine and into your brain, and that’s where bad Ideas come from”

                                     

The above is a line I stole from a friends’ BBM profile picture.

I’ve had a lot of horrible ideas in my life time, which in itself is not so unfortunate. Most people have had a few. No biggie. However, I have also had the misfortune of trying to carry out many of those bad ideas. Therein lies the problem. I tend to have an overactive imagination, as most readers of this blog I’m sure are already aware, and it has put me in a lot of trouble over the years.

I remember being four or five years old and deciding that I wanted to fly. Blame Peter Pan. All his talk about kids being able to do anything if only they just believed totally messed me up for a while there. I spoke to my brother about it and he convinced me that it was a great idea and worth a shot. In hindsight, I see that he was probably trying to get back at me for the little incident/accident that had happened the previous week. It involved a tree, a piece of string and a guava. I think he totally overreacted by the way, I mean I know he was nearly strangled to death but seriously, little girls will be little girls’ right?

Moving on, so after getting my brothers blessing, I decided that I was going to take a leap (literally) of faith and earn my flying wings.

I got my favorite towel, made it into a cape around my neck and climbed to the top of the wardrobe in the room we both shared, while he watched form his bed. “Go on” he said, with what I now realize was an evil glint in his eyes. “Jump, you can do it!”

                                  
“Yes!” I shouted “Yes I can!” I began to flap my arms while yelling “I can fly! I can fly!” then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and jumped. Three hours later, I find myself in the hospital with a bandage round my ankle and a nasty bruise on my lip. I scream in pain as a surly nurse stabs me with an injection needle, while my brother calmly licks his Fan Yogo ice cream. He is watching my ordeal with great interest from the visitors chair in a corner of the room where he is seated. I get scolded multiple times by my parents who tell me to be more like my brother, the 'Angel child' who never did anything stupid. As I glare at him, I see in my minds eye the imaginary halo my parents have created around his head positively glowing, and at that moment, I make a mental note to myself; jumping off elevated platforms of any kind is a no, no.

Then there was the time when I made up my mind that I was going to become a health junkie. It started with the Atkins protein only diet that was all the rage back then, and ended with me in the gym at 6:45am in the morning while sane people slept. After nearly passing out on a street corner because my body was so weak form lack of Carbs (now I know why they taught us to chant: Cah-boh-hy-drate is for he-ner-gie! In Integrated Science class when we were kids); I dropped the Atkins plan like a hot potato. Soon after, I found out that the founder, Dr Roberts Atkins himself was at the time of his death clinically obese, go figure.

The gyming stopped too, after I woke up one morning in so much pain that I couldn’t move my fingers to turn on the shower for my morning bath. They literally just froze, I had to limp around my bedroom for literally half an hour (I had lost the ability to walk properly days ago) speaking in tongues before I regained feelings in my upper limbs again. I had to advise myself to take it easy, its not be force to look like Serena Williams, she got paid millions of dollars to stay that fit. I paid thousands of naira (not that it’s in any way comparable) to try to look half as fit. You get my drift?

Then, just last week, I woke up one weekday morning feeling just a tiny bit more fly than usual. I decided I needed some extra swag to my outfit to work; they came in the form of four and a half inch gladiator heels. I have to say they looked amazing, I was sure I’d be able to cope; after all, my job mostly requires me to work behind my desk. So I put on my shoes, and sashayed out the door. I hailed a cab and arrived in front of my office building feeling fresh. I noticed a few women giving my feet admiring glances as I walked in and held my held just a bit higher.

For the most part, I worked on my computer all morning just like I’d anticipated and I was fine. Then came my lunch hour, I remembered that I had quite a few important errands to run that day, so I went downstairs to get some cash from the ATM. Getting there, I was pleased to see that there was none of the usual lunchtime queue, I realized why a few seconds later when the machine informed me that it was unable to dispense cash. Darn! That meant a trip to the next ATM, in front of a bank, two streets away. I’d have to walk there, because the distance was too short to take a cab, it just wouldn’t have made sense. Yet, long enough for me to work up a serious sweat with each painful footstep I took. Finally, I got there, annoyed and upset with myself, the shoes, the sun that was so hot, the orange sellers comfortably seated under the cool shade of a large umbrella, that lady in the stall next to me who looked so calm and collected, everyone and everything in fact. And yes, my feet learnt a painful lesson, next time; take a cab, no matter how silly/lazy you look, being stylish and elegant requires that you must from time to time I suppose.

I’d love to say and there lies the end of my fallacies, from now on, its wisdom all the way, but I’d just be lying to myself. I know that that mistakes are a part of life, we stop learning the day we die.

The hallmark of a bad idea however, is that your mind says no, but your body says yes.

I have vowed to never again jeopardize my health and well being in an attempt to carry out what my BFF THS usually tells me is a bad idea. Oh yeah, I always get warned, I just choose sometimes to ignore the warnings. At the expense of my body parts and my shoes.

Like I said. Never again. After all, with God all things are possible

Cheers

*BFF-Best Friend Forever

*THS-The Holy Spirit

A Case of Mental Stalking

I have an unfortunate habit of people watching whenever I find myself in a public place. It’s just my thing, some women love jewelry, some 28inch waist length Brazilian hair, yet others, anything their boyfriends love. Me? I enjoy mental stalking.

For the sake of clarity, I will set out to explain my definition of mental stalking. It is the art of watching total strangers on the street, in fast food restaurants, at the cinema, church, weddings, funerals, or any other public place and making up stories in your head about their lives; Who they are, where they are form, why they have a funny looking hat on, and so on.

Now, let me tell you, metal stalking is an art, and like all art forms, it requires a certain amount of talent, which after careful training can be fine tuned into a skill. It’s not easy coming up with anecdotes about people you never even spoken to. You have to harness your powers of creativity. It also requires a high degree of subtlety when glancing at people. You don’t want to be caught ogling red handed, else you be mistaken for a crazed, lonely weirdo who has no life; or even worse, a thief. You know how paranoid we Nigerians can get, especially those living in Lagos. Being caught staring at someone, can lead the ‘staree ‘to the illogical conclusion that the ‘starer’ must be the leader of a gang of robbers who haunt people down at social gatherings. Most especially if the ‘staree’ considers his/her self to be a person of means and high social standing.

You also don’t want to be caught staring because let’s face it, at the risk of sounding hypocritical, it’s just plain rude. I mean who really wants to be out some where having a blast, or in a state of worship, or pretending to weep at the funeral of a 99 year old great-grand mother, and look up and see someone you can swear you’ve never seen before in your life gazing intently at you. Let me tell you, no one does. Yep. Not even me. Go ahead, call me charlatan, I understand. Truth is, its just plain creepy.

One day, I went for a wedding. I had woken up that morning with absolutely no intention of attending the event. I hadn’t even known about it. I was in the kitchen trying to whip up a heart attack on a plate, i.e English fry-up breakfast of eggs, bacon, and sausage, when my mum strolled into the kitchen and casually informed me that my third cousin twice removed; or something to that effect, was getting married that morning. Good for her I thought, but what’s my own? Until I realized that that was my mother’s way of saying she expected me to go with her. Some people who know me know that I am not a huge fan of weddings. Especially weddings of people I don’t know, whose guest lists naturally comprise of their friends and family members that I have never met. I find such events to be extremely tedious and boring. So I grumbled and mumbled, whined and moaned, but my Mum was having none of it. Two hours later, I found myself walking into the church in a peach colored dress and silver heels; everyone else, including my mother was dressed in the wedding colors of green and gold, so I looked totally off. Strike one.

Then, the wedding march started and all arose for the bride as she walked in. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the cousin I had never met. Then finally I saw her, resplendent in a strapless, blinding white dress with a heavily protruding tummy that the empire waist line cut failed to hide. Watching her walk down the aisle was quite nerve wracking, I was afraid she was going to drop at any second. Looking at the faces of the guests around me, I could see that I wasn’t the only one who was thinking the same thing that I was, which was that, it appears orthodox churches are a lot more lenient these days. Many Pentecostal churches would never have allowed it. Why, a strapless dress in church! Who’d have thought?

Anyways, an hour and a half later, we are at the reception, the bride thankfully has not yet gone into labour and the MC is trying in vain to keep the jokes flowing. Unfortunately, many of his gags come out sounding extremely awkward as they mainly revolve around the highly sensitive issue of the couples’ first night. It is quite obvious to all that they have probably already had many nights. All this after the grooms’ best friend was called out to give a speech about how the couple met, but ended up rambling for fifteen minutes about how the bride is such a good and disciplined girl, with high moral standings from a well brought up home. Strike Two.

                                            

Then, it is the lady who baked the cakes’ turn to describe the inspiration behind her design. The cake is predominantly green, everyone knows green usually symbolizes fertility; there is no need to pray about the couple’s fertility as we can all quite clearly see that the marriage is already fruitful. Another awkward five minutes is spent by the cake maker, trying to focus on the tiny splashes of gold on the cake, and how that symbolizes wealth and prosperity, and so on and so forth. Strike Three.

At this point, I am bored. I can’t help it. I start to mental stalk. My eyes move around the room searching for interesting subjects. They settle on a young adult woman with an amazing looking natural fro. Back then, I had been seriously contemplating going au naturel with my hair, so I was fascinated by any woman I saw rocking a natural do. Ironically, the few minutes I spent looking at her were not spent thinking up tales about an imaginary pot bellied boss who had a crush on her. I was actually trying to visualize my self in that hair style, and to figure out whether or not that was her natural texture, or if she’d had it texturised, when it happened. I got caught. I watched for a split second as her eyes met mine before I quickly looked away, she gave me that “are you a total psycho?!” look, then tapped her friends and pointed me out to them. I could imagine the conversation that they would be having at that moment. What on earth is wrong with that girl? Do you think she might have a few loose screws? Could she be your boyfriend’s crazy ex? I had been totally busted and I was mortified. I had to spend the next few hours seated across from them and putting up with their nasty stares until, finally, the reception was over and we could leave.

The moral of this story?

If you want to be a mental stalker, you have to make sure do it with style, grace and finesse at all times. That way, if you get caught, you can simply brush it off, ‘What? Oh no sorry, was actually looking at that piece of artwork right above your head’ for example would be a very valid excuse.

Then again, you can simply choose not to engage in it at all.

Quick Question: I hear there’s Peruvian and Chilean hair now, ethnically speaking, what’s the difference between a Chilean, a Brazilian and a Peruvian woman? Aren’t they all the same race? Just wondering.

Cheers