A girl by design

“What has happened to your eyes?” Joe asked.
“What?” Karen panicked turning to her bag to retrieve a mirror.
“The eyelids. They are purple.” Joe continued.
“So?” Karen’s tone turned to sarcastic.
“I don’t know. It looks…” and Joe knew he was going to pay the price for his ignorance.

I cannot blame him though. For a guy who has not grown up around girls, how else was he supposed to know that eyelids, eyebrows, cheeks, name it, can adapt to whatever colour we chose to let them and that was none of his business. And next time he had any bland questions, he could result to boy gangs commentaries or better still, hit Google for objectivity’s sake.

A while later Joe got his chance to grouse.
“Women are so trivial. No wonder they take forever getting ready to get out of the house.”
Trivial. That is taking the wrong angle. Specific is more of it, but even that does not quite do us justice.
Blame our genetic coding but we also cannot explain the impulse to buy endless pairs of shoes we will not wear. Did I hear correct that the current trend is collecting designer shoes? Museum shoes will be more like it.
And like Joe and his counterparts will have discovered, we are masters at exterior design. We effectively co-work with our Creator and reinforce, in front of a mirror, what He saw when He said “we are fearfully and wonderfully made”. With appropriate lighting, we can even be fit to appear on Prime Time TV. Next time, believe your buddies advice: when it comes to women, what you see is not what you get.
We are a resultant weird (for lack of a better word) combination of our mamas advice, our girlfriends opinions, Carol Wahome’s fashion tips, Oprah-****- half clones and a wee bit of our own original sense of fashion. And even that is subject to budgetary factors, determining whether we will end up with a GUCCI or CUCCI.

We cannot explain even to ourselves, our fascination with stilettos that kill our backs, pointed toes that give us prize bunions and polythene suits in weird (that word again) colours. I am trying not to think about that spaghetti-strap top that is a Friday-night wear come rain or hail.
And shouldn’t someone put it straight in our men’s minds that we never dress up for them? We know they like what they see (unlike us who see what we like) but that short jeans skirt just looks good on me so I thought, why not? And if my boobs are spilling out of my kid-size top, so what?

I am not to blame for the size of my rear and front. It is therefore not a compliment, as men will presume, to ogle, worse still, to drool at them.
Back to essentials. What is wrong with taking two hours in the bathroom? At least we do show up there. And the mirror, having been invented so long ago with inspiration from reflections in a pond or river, should not lose its function.

We are not sorry our makeup costs more than we dare acknowledge. But someone has to keep the cosmetics industry running.
And to put records straight, until we can swear by his bank balance, we will have to tag along all our girlfriends (ok, three is a good compromise) on dates. We need the security incase he is a weirdo. It is also a good time to test his generosity strain and conversational skills. Let no one begrudge us, if like cats, we have an affinity for the finer things in life, especially when we are not footing the bill. It is not gold digging. It is wisdom Vs survival instinct. Why crawl when you can stand on someone’s shoulders?

Giggling does not mean we are shallow. It is just a combi-label for our sex and age. It says we are finding whatever is going on hilarious or are trying to and with an original joke, we could even give a genuine laugh.

Gone are the days when men thought all women empty between the ears. So while we will not try to impress the world with our Mensa IQs and our hardworking nature, we still will not mind if they respect our job titles instead of thinking we slept our way to the top. And while we are on that topic, being a single girl does not automatically qualify you for “hunter’s list”. As research has confirmed, greater things than how to satisfy men’s whims run in our cerebrums.

Finally, let the men accept that they were asleep when we were being created. They will never quite figure us out.

My voice for the Unborn

We all think babies are cute especially if they are on Pampers or Vaseline commercials. Until you realize that you are the one who is to have the baby and that decision never for once featured in your contingency plans. You either have two years to complete college (and your parents are having enough trouble raising your fees), you are just launching into the deep end of your career, your man just gave you the boot, or you are 45 years old, with your last child in form two and wondering what the heck to do with a baby.

I believe there is no greater honor God bestowed a woman than that: being able to produce, nurture and bring forth a life. She may not have had the choice in the particular order of chromosome combinations but it is her baby alright. It is evident it in the pride in her eye as she watches the baby breastfeed, as he takes his first step, as he leaves for his first day to school, on the day he graduates from college, on the day she walks down the aisle…

But bless choice. We have discovered that if a baby comes at the wrong time, science did provide options. We will visit one of the many ‘abortueries’ around town and get rid of the ‘blob of blood’ before it messes up our cutely planned life. And life will go on. Monday we will be back at work or in class, thriving as ever, Saturday we walk down the aisle clad in pure white, sweet and innocent and Sunday we are ushering in the Church. But as much as we may want to look sanctimonious and harmless, the epitome of a liberated modern woman, statistics are selling out our game. Looking at abortion figures from a local university, I gained a new respect for every woman and girl who chooses to give birth after a crisis pregnancy. It is only after getting through the horror list of all abortions that have been procured (some are actually repeat offenders) that you realize that giving birth takes courage and strength, and I am not talking about the pain involved.

The choice to sacrifice a baby for “us” will cross the mind of almost every one who has had to deal with a baby we never bargained for. Of course at that  time we would rather not think of it in terms of a baby- more of a pregnancy, the result of conception. It gets easier if we are thinking of it versus a father who has jumped ship, an income that is not enough to feed you alone, a job that takes up more calories than you are taking in, a husband who would care less, or parents who are ready to disown you. Then we will defend abortion as a woman’s right, an important political symbol of the emancipated woman’s right to “control her own body.” But before we swallow that emancipation crap, maybe it is time we went back to our woman instinct and asked ourselves how free it makes us, trading an unwanted pregnancy for guilt, shame, years of denial and a permanent life marker where life is dated as ‘before’ and ‘after’ the abortion. It is simply a cruel trade-off, one we may take the rest of our lives getting over if we ever do

If you still insist on going ahead and getting rid of the minor inconvenience that pregnancy is, it would only be fair to consult the man responsible and not so that he pays for the operation. He just might want to keep the child. Like a friend one day said, “ who knows? That child might grow up to be the next president of Kenya. I cannot just take that risk.” But for those with consciences the size of the Pacific, save yourself the trauma. You will of course lose a lot in choosing to keep a baby you never bargained for but get encouraged. Researchers investigating post-abortion reactions say that the only positive emotion associated with abortion is relief. And that is understandable considering the pressure a woman is likely to be in to get it done with.

May be it is time someone told of the emotional trauma, of the crying bouts, the years of wondering if you will ever get another baby, the revulsion every time we see a baby, the hoping that people and God will accept you if they ever discover the truth, the flashbacks that we are have to use all our mental energy to repress…

May be, just maybe, life does not begin at conception. And may be, we have no right to bring a baby in the world when we think we cannot handle it. May be we even possess sophisticated philosophies, strong coping resources, and semantic agility, that can keep the aborted life at a distance. The only question which remains is how well we will be able to live with this truth…or how long we will be able to run from it?