Your ideals and opinions are informed by the ideals and opinions favourable to them because you cannot stand to not be accepted, to not be praised.
By Belvic Olowo
Woman, there are knots tightly tied in your mind that you need to, by your own hands, loosen. Ideas and thoughts that have been passed down to you by people who had it passed down to them by people who had it passed down to them—a long, exhausting chain you must drop off from as though your life depends on it. Because it does.
Since your teenage years, the age of 30 has been a significant marker in your eyes — the age before which a woman should be married. It is the age she begins to expire; no longer young, her choices shrinking, her urgency rising. When you were younger, you looked at that one aunt with pity. While your mother and the other women in your family came to events with their husbands and children, it was always just her. Her skin was clearer than everyone else’s, her business was successful, but she was 32 and “nothing had been done on her head”. It was only a matter of time before someone asked when she would bring a man home and reminded her she was not getting any younger.
Now that you are twenty-something, you don’t say it, but the fear is sitting in your heart like an old book on a shelf. More than desiring marriage, you are tempted to prioritise marrying before 30 over marrying well. You don’t want to become your mother’s prayer point, ending up like your aunt and all the women who magically became old hags by 12 midnight on their 30th birthdays. Or maybe you’re already thirty-something — restlessly searching for a man, any man, who will bestow upon you the favour of marriage, because your worth, you’ve been told, decreases as your age increases.
Now let’s talk about your mother. Since you were born, she lived and breathed for you, your siblings, and your father. Her everyday consisted of tending to your needs. She never rested, she never fell sick, she never did anything but pour into you. Her life centred on you so completely that she did absolutely nothing for herself, so completely that her only identity became wife and mother. A heroine. Supermom. The ideal mother. Society’s gold standard of virtue.
Only that you are grown now, and when you think of women you want to be like, she’s not on the list. You love your mother, and you will do anything for her, but you admire those who chased their dreams and carved a path for themselves beyond husband and children. But then you’ve also always learnt that you are the best person to do everything for your family. A househelp could sleep with your husband, and hiring a nanny? The number one sign of a lazy mother. So, how can you be both a supermom and a world-class expert in your field?
Let’s move on to something else: your relationship with the next girl. Nobody sat you down to tell you that your neighbour’s daughter of the same age was your competition, but you have always known. Of course you have. The grown women around you dressed up for parties, and their major goal was to look better than one woman or the other also in attendance. When your cousin bought blue wedge shoes a week after your sister bought hers, your sister fumed that she was copying her. Two seniors in your school once fought because they liked the same guy. So yes, you too are watching — comparing, measuring, checking if the next girl is doing better than you, if her outfit looks better than yours.
Even online, you can’t escape it. A random man on Twitter is asking what you’d do if your mother-in-law enters the front seat beside your husband when the three of you are heading out. It’s always you versus the next woman. Always.
And if you’re unmarried, you cannot drink water and drop the cup before someone somewhere advises you on how to mould yourself into what men like. As a lady, you must not be loud. You must not speak pidgin in public. Men prefer you with your natural hair and without makeup, so that’s what you should do. If you don’t like egusi soup and haven’t learnt to cook it, that’s a disaster — because what if your future husband likes it? You must adjust, bend, and break yourself into what a man would find suitable. Your entire existence is framed around the idea that you will someday be a wife: nothing else.
Or maybe you’re one of those so deeply committed to being perceived as good in the eyes of men that you no longer know who you are. You live and breathe for their applause. If the answer is “No” but men say “Yes”, then your answer is “Yes”. Your ideals and opinions are informed by the ideals and opinions favourable to them because you cannot stand to not be accepted, to not be praised. You have been convinced that you are in a race — and that men are the prize.
These, and more, are the stories you’ve been told since you were born a bouncing baby girl. This is the tune you will continue to dance to unless you consciously decide to free yourself; to teach yourself that you are a complete person, worthy and valuable as you are; to unlearn the restrictions placed on you disguised as divine design for your gender; to learn to love yourself, and be yourself, and fight for yourself; to disappoint your mother and aunties if need be; to set yourself free.
Belvic Olowo is a creative writer with interest in gender and feminism discourses. She enjoys reading and writing about African women, capturing moments through mobile videography, and creating content for social media. She is @belvicolowo_ on Instagram and @BelvicOlowo on X.