The Audacity of Being too much Woman: Yoruba Parties and other Indignities Surrounding being a Woman among women

Preamble:

You see, in my mother’s womb, I did not behave like a girl. My mother said I was so restless that she thought I was a boy, turning here, turning there, tumbling... She said it got to the point that whenever she was in the doctor's waiting room, she had to turn aside slightly to hide the “unbecoming” way her stomach appeared to be the only one performing acrobatics. Before the scan, she was convinced I was a boy but I was not a boy. When I started walking, I wanted to be dressed in nothing but my brother’s clothes. I had my way but I soon received a memo that I was a girl, not a boy. That has made all the difference. And because I am lovin’ it, bent on not allowing anyone to make it a cage, and that has been all the problem. It has always been tumbling around, finding that spot where I am not being taught how to be a woman.

Scenario 1:

I go on a date. I am seated opposite my date. A waitress strolls in and turns to my date: “What do you want?” You would think she would acknowledge me, but no, the message was clear. She was not going to. I really do not know what was going on in her mind but my date had to ask me what I wanted before relaying it to her.

Scenario 2:

Yoruba parties get to me. I use the word “Yoruba” here before I am accused of hasty generalisation. You are a woman, you are related to the celebrant and you are seen, for one minute, to seem to be enjoying the party. If you watch the other women’s faces, it is the grimace of a cat when it is feeling what I don’t know (who knows what goes on in the head of cats anyway?), it is the shock that is usually reserved for rampaging cows. How can you be a female relative and dare to look good, dress like you are not a house elf and not have a pinched face? You see, the average family, from the minor “shooking eye” that I have done here and there, believe that when it comes to cooking party food for the family (of which there are plenty in the average Yoruba family) it is the “wives” of the family that constitute the work-force. I heard of a woman the other wives came to pull away from the party where she sat all well dressed - (feeling uppity, as they deemed it) beside her husband to come and join the other wives. Her husband was livid...

Scenario 3:

I sat down last week, doing my own thing when a conversation about a woman claiming her property rights started around me. It did not interest me until the woman talking said, amazed and disgusted: Obinrin-birin, (in the tone of “common woman”) doing that to men.

Scenario 4

300level, I was at a bus-stop when a mad woman made for me aggressively, yelling: “ashewo” besides other obscenities. I do not know how this fits in but let it just sit there. Don't tell me she was mad, I know. If I was in the mood for mental acrobatics, I would go on and say why I think it all adds up. For me, it adds up.

 Scenario 5

I walk into a room. I see two tables. A man behind one, a woman behind one... Most often than not I approach the one with the man behind it because it is usually easier, not always, but usually.

I find that it is all about women picking on women. Women staying within a box and wondering who that brazen woman is... What makes her feel she is special? What does she take herself for, us lying here in the mud and taking it, why can she not take it?

You see, I have observed that women with the biggest sob-stories on their marriages are very vocal in telling other women to “find someone and marry quickly.” What is it sef? Is it something about misery loving company or what?

If there are men who love to cook party food and women who love to dust the chairs, why must the man be shooed and booed off the cooking like it’s an exclusive club or something? I have seen women drive men off cooking, hair dressing and other affairs even when they wanted so much to do it. At that point, cooking which I love so much loses meaning and I just step aside. FGM, it is an old woman at the other end of the blade. It is mothers teaching their daughters to be good girls: Shut up, conform, behave and swallow it. Look at Janie of Their Eyes were Watching God, see Shug of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, see Sula of Toni Morrison’s Sula. It was women hating on them. It is mothers making some men feel like all women are their footstools.

Some people will say it is not really women; that it is patriarchy pushing them but no, there is no mistaking the vibe, the venom you get from a woman who believes you aren’t staying in your place. No, I am not calling women together to come and be forming “sistahs”. And yes, I know women have each other’s backs sometimes like the legendary tap you are likely to get from any woman of any nationality, tribe or standing, the whisper in your ear: “Am I stained?” I know that.

 

What I question is why some women are content to wallow in the mud and hate any woman who is “full of herself, thinking she is better than us”... bhet why?