Are You Ugly Or Are You Just Looking For Validation?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO BE DESIRED AT 13???

Our story starts where a young Hauwa discovers romantic novels. 

It marked the beginning of the end for me. I started to understand the concept of beauty and desirability, especially to the opposite gender. Before that, I was a girl who just wanted to play rough, sweat like a goat and eat.

However, with the discovery of ✨romantic novels✨, I started to make sure my uniform was immaculately clean so boys would notice me. I ate a certain way, walked a certain way, considered bleaching my ‘ugly’ dark skin (actual advice from some aunties 👀), and begged my mum to relax my hair, rather than send me off to school with this rubbish rubber hairstyle.

She refused and for three days, I was convinced my mother was a witch.

On my end, I did everything to appear desirable but the only time boys spoke to me was when they needed my pinafore.

(Back story. In junior secondary school, girls had to wear a pinafore and my mum made sure mine was as big as a sack. Boys weren’t allowed to bring footballs into the school and their bags were searched to make sure. So, because my pinafore was large, they would deflate the ball and ask me to hide it for them.)

That was my only use.

By the end of JSS3, I cried hot tears to my mother, asking her why boys didn’t like me. My father was away in Mecca, at the time. When he came back, my mother downloaded my woes to him and this was how he looked at me for the rest of that year.

To be fair, if I went all the way to Mecca to pray and came back to hear that my teenage daughter was crying over being undesirable, I’d be pretty mad too. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO BE DESIRED AT 13???

During my junior break, I decided that I was going to be beautiful and desirable by resumption. After my mum bought my uniforms for senior school (A shirt and skirt), I went to the tailors and got them slim-fitted.

When my mum saw it, she complained and I told her I’d take it back. I never did. LMAO.

In addition to that, the heavens smiled down on me and my breasts came in looking magnificent! Shakira’s ‘hips don’t lie’ also came out that year so, I added it to my portfolio and started learning how to whine my waist. I said that hot, I MUST HOT IT.

School resumed and hay! If you had seen me in my uniform! And my tiny wedge shoes! My hair was not relaxed but at least, I was no longer doing the rubber hairstyle. Your girl was set!

Now, by all my calculations, boys were supposed to be falling over themselves for my attention. Lmao. The rude ela life gave me was peppery. 

Boys didn’t toast me. I no see even one boy like this.

That sealed it. I was ugly. One boy looked at me with disappointment because there wasn’t even space in my skirt for ball again. Pity.

It didn’t occur to me to just look into the mirror and see myself. Instead I saw myself through the eyes of other people.

The only thing I liked about myself were my breasts. In my head, I had great breasts hence, it was attractive to boys and because of that, I liked them. If they were unattractive to the male gender, I would have hated them. As simple as that.

This is so painful to write. I’m almost retching but let’s go on. 😩

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Although, I eventually started dating a boy in SS3 but he went to the UK for university (but that’s story for another day). Anyway, for years, I looked at myself through the male gaze. Every thing, I bought or did was to appear attractive to the male gender. It wasn’t even their fault, I had forcefully placed my worth on them.

You have to understand that as a girl who was brought up in patriarchal Nigerian society and had been told - from the moment she could hear - that one of her primary goals in life is to be picked to become a wife and mother, it almost becomes second nature to want to perform for the male gender. 

You wear things you think men will find attractive. You are told to learn to cook for your husband. To accept that you might have to give up your favourite foods because your husband might not like it. To covet certain body types because, again, men like it.

Let me quickly add that there is nothing wrong with doing all of the above as long as you’re not doing it to appear attractive to anyone. For example, a lot of people love to cook for their husbands because they genuinely like it, not because they are told or forced to like it.

I can’t remember when I stopped my own performance but I saw a tweet by a woman asking men for their icks and as I went through the hilarious replies, it hit me that 13-year-old Hauwa would’ve been taking notes of things to stay away from to become more attractive to men.

Sigh. I want to hold that baby and tell her sorry. 

Some people already know this but for the girls that don’t, I’m here to say it.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Really look. Do you think you’re not beautiful enough because you really aren’t or because you’re looking for external validation? If it’s the latter, I have news for you, baby. And it is not good.

Until you start seeing yourself as beautiful. No-one else will. And it is not because they don’t, but because in your head YOU believe they don’t. 

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Yesterday, I was at the cinemas, wearing an old shirt and jeans. Someone said I looked good & I replied saying I knew. Because even if nobody complimented me, I knew it.  The compliment was just an added bonus.

So, release yourself from the shackles of societal gaze and I promise, you will find beauty everywhere. My journey was long and although it was worth it, I hope yours doesn’t have to take as long.

I love you.