A. M. K

Nobody understands disdain like a woman whose man has found himself a new woman. Nobody understands self scrutiny and criticism quite the way a teenage girl does. Though for the teenage girl, this initial fear that she might not be ‘enough’ usually subsides. But then adulthood presents yet another card, the physical changes of growing older and of being pregnant [for some].

I once asked my mother what it felt like to be old. I definitely hope that I phrased it better than that.

“I feel like I’m still the same inside. It’s the outside that has changed,” she replied.

It is one of the paradoxes of life, I suppose. That your inner spirit would remain the same, influenced only by your experience of life while your outer body ages. Some have attempted to reflect the youthfulness they feel inside with silicon boobs and fillers but it has not been a total success. It is interesting that, the age at which most women will eventually wish they could freeze in time is the same face and body, that they did not at that point in time find beautiful. The severely fragmented body part fetish culture that is the norm today definitely makes it more difficult. It seems to condense women into only a pair of twerking bums or a private part.

It has its advantages. It compliments the age old running theme of the world – the power struggle between men and women, whereby the objectification and lessening of one part of the human population has scored us women very poorly on the value card.

A woman’s value has been tied to her beauty for a very long time. That is why, whenever we look into the mirror, more than looking for whether we are still beautiful, we look for whether we are still valuable.

And because women’s beauty has been tied to age (‘Sweet Sixteen’), we think our value has an expiry date. Many women joke that they have declared themselves the same age for many years. And those are the honest ones! That is why the dreaded, “How old do you think i am?” always actually means, do you think I’m STILL beautiful? Do you think I’m lovable?

Back to pregnancy

Pregnancy for me came with both the anxiety of spontaneous body changes, a sense of duality and a loss of connection to my body. A duality perceived and cultivated by righteous perfectionism that I struggled with during another season.

I got the round popping baby bump I wanted but later on in my trimesters I began to worry that it was a little too big. Having a short torso and a big baby not only meant that I got too tired to walk or stand for long periods of time without reeling back and forth but it also meant that my baby pushed out on my intra- abdominal muscles and affected my back alignment. And in these aspects, part of my fears of losing myself had manifested.

One evening at committee meeting for a wedding ceremony, seven months pregnant- tired, round and roughed up by acne, a friend of my mother’s came up to me and exclaimed, “You look beautiful!” My response was a muddled and confused, “Really?” and “Thank you” and then I rushed to the bathrooms filled with emotion and brimming tears. I could tell that she really meant it.

After birth

I would say, the first look after birth should be extended to at least a week. It is not just the swollen touched out body, it’s just that the demanding wails and absolute rights to the milk tanks is enough to burn you out.

But when you do take that first look, you must treat myself with dignity even though you might not like what you see. Your body will probably always remember that it carried a baby. Your heart does too. Treating yourself with dignity means speaking well to yourself and taking steps to get your physique where you want it to be. I have found, that yoga and dancing do that for me. Though I have not been free to do yoga due to the high risk of increasing my diastasis recti. This I did not anticipate.

In the meantime, I have discovered that it is important to appreciate our bodies WHOLLY but that it is also important to go deeper. We will most probably also find that we are good friends, business women, caretakers, professionals, good cooks, writers, dancers, singers, tailors and we offer much more than just tourist incentives.

“Be careful who you tell your dreams.” T.D Jakes

When people were picking groups, I too wanted to be chosen. Children are very strict when it comes to forming groups. It is like a personality CV. Your CV can be dumped in the bin if you are a second born and not a last one.

“You are not in our group!”

That was a phrase in primary school not uncommon on the school playground especially at break time and it was and still is one of the most difficult to metabolize. I was part of a group. One of the girls had declared me her best friend. I don’t remember when that had happened, but she had crowned me and I accepted. She was beautiful and grown up and intelligent. As a rule she never said anything about her father and sometimes she stared out into space so deeply for so long that even if you called her name and shook her, she did not stop re-living some distant memory. In a way, she was never really part of the group. She was too grown up for groups.

The other girls in our group were one, tall, thin and light brown- a creative with her hands. She made me many presents and had once sent me a note asking me to be her best friend but I was already taken. You could not have two best friends. It was sacrilege. If you dared, you would lose both. People always asked, Who is your best friend? You would say, C. And then they would find C and ask her the same question. If the answers did not match, you would wish it was home time. The jury would be on to you. They would tell A that she wasn’t your best friend. A would cry and the next morning, you would be replaced. There was always someone waiting on the side lines.

The other girl in our group was tall and big with round white glowing eyes. She always tucked in her P.E shorts too high which made her stomach stick out. She also put vaseline all over her face until it shone in the morning sun. Once she put so much vaseline that she even covered her socks with it. Her socks were always pulled up over her knees. Her stories were strange- about demons convulsing in the garden at her home and about her drinking jerricans of water when she got sick.

We could not speak to the girls in the other groups. Some groups were two-corded, others five but our arch rivals were a group of five. If you so much as smiled at each other when you picked the same book during library time on Thursdays, the other members of your group would hold you in suspicion.

Foreigners did not count- either as members or non members. They always left anyway. Nyandeng left, extremely tall- she stood out, the way she jumped up when we played and left her dress swinging or tied it to up her thighs. Jugdip, whose brothers and sisters all had names which ended in ‘dip’ also left. We were enamoured by Jugdip’s hair. It was shiny, long and always plaited in a three strand braid and it had an ‘Indian smell’ (in children’s language. In adult language, it was probably coconut oil) It looked like a rope. One day we had pleaded with her to un-plait it but she refused. I think she knew that she would be in trouble. Her mother never smiled at us when she found us with her at pick up time. Sometimes she run away from us to meet her mother before her mother had barely come through the gate. She must have gone to another school made for people with the same hair.

Close knit groups continued through High School. We didn’t call them groups and the criteria was a little more complicated. We definitely did not out rightly tell anyone not to be part of ‘our group’ but it was always clear who was in or who wasn’t. It was clear when you woke up to book a bathing space in the early morning and you didn’t wake them up. It was clear if you went for break or lunch without them. It was clear if you left for evening prep without checking if they were ready to leave. And if you never called them to take photos with you when Student the photographer came, then you surely were not friends. Sometimes being part of the same photo could even make you friends- so, being invited for one was important in letting you know where you stood.

Finally when University came, the final place before graduating to adulthood, it proved true- the adage- out of mind. Many friendships are ‘situationships’– not many of them survive the distance, not many of them survive not being in the same vicinity or in the same school or not seeing each other every day.

Today, I was listening to a preaching from T.D Jakes on Castbox as I have been for the past few days. He was talking about friendship. What he said, spoke to that searching, searching for a long term connection in a relationship which was only seasonal, looking for meaning in a place where there is none, looking for confidants among ‘constituents’ and ‘comrades’. Confidants (in my own analogy), being the people who take care of you, wipe the blood off your mouth, give you a drink of water before you go back into the boxing ring that life can sometimes be. Constituents, being the people who stand for what you stand for- winning. The comrades, being the people with whom you share a common enemy- your opponent. You can be certain that when someone else represents what you represented for your constituents at the time or when your common enemy has been overcome, your constituents and comrades will leave you.

From that message and another message I read on Facebook written by someone who was starting to understand Rejection, I gathered that, sometimes you no longer fit because you are not supposed to fit. It is like looking for depth in a basin. Let go.

Author: A. M. K

Beauty unseen

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