If she likes makeup, let her wear it. If she likes fashion, let her dress up. But if she doesn’t like either, let her be. Don’t think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male—sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men’s grooming is never suspect in the way women’s grooming is—a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.
Never, ever link Chizalum’s appearance with morality. Never tell her that a short skirt is “immoral.” Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality. If you clash over what she wants to wear, never say things like “You look like a prostitute,” as I know your mother once told you. Instead, say, “That dress doesn’t flatter you like this other one.” Or doesn’t fit as well. Or doesn’t look as attractive. Or is simply ugly. But never “immoral.” Because clothes have absolutely nothing to do with morality.
Try not to link hair with pain. I think of my childhood and how often I cried while my dense long hair was being plaited. I think of how a packet of Smarties chocolates was kept in front of me as a reward if I sat through having my hair done. And for what? Imagine if we had not spent so many Saturdays of our childhood and teenagehood doing our hair. What might we have learned? In what ways might we have grown? What did boys do on Saturdays?
So with her hair, I suggest that you redefine “neat.” Part of the reason that hair is about pain for so many girls is that adults are determined to conform to a version of “neat” that means Too Tight and Scalp-Destroying and Headache-Infusing.
We need to stop. I’ve seen girls in school in Nigeria being terribly harassed for their hair not being “neat,” merely because some of their God-given hair had curled up in glorious tight little balls at their temples. Make Chizalum’s hair loose—big plaits and big cornrows, and don’t use a tiny-toothed comb that wasn’t made with our hair texture in mind.
And make that your definition of “neat.” Go to her school and talk to the administration if you have to. It takes one person to make change happen.
Chizalum will notice very early on—because children are perceptive—what kind of beauty the mainstream world values. She will see it in magazines and films and television. She will see that whiteness is valued. She will notice that the hair texture that is valued is straight or swingy, and hair that is valued falls down rather than stands up. She will encounter these values whether you like it or not. So make sure that you create alternatives for her to see. Let her know that slim white women are beautiful, and that non-slim, non-white women are beautiful. Let her know that there are many individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition of beauty attractive. You will know your child best, and so you will know best how to affirm her own kind of beauty, how to protect her from looking at her own reflection with dissatisfaction.
Surround her with a village of aunties, women who have qualities you’d like her to admire. Talk about how much you admire them. Children copy and learn by example. Talk about what you admire about them. I, for example, particularly admire the African American feminist Florynce Kennedy. Some African women I would tell her about are Ama Ata Aidoo, Dora Akunyili, Muthoni Likimani, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett. There are so many African women who are sources of feminist inspiration. Because of what they have done and because of what they have refused to do. Like your grandmother, by the way, that remarkable, strong, sharp-tongued babe.
Surround Chizalum, too, with a village of uncles. This will be harder, judging from the kind of friends Chudi has. I still cannot get over that blustering man with the over-carved beard who kept saying at Chudi’s last birthday party, “Any woman I marry cannot tell me what to do!!”
So please find some good non-blustering men. Men like your brother Ugomba, men like our friend Chinakueze. Because the truth is that she will encounter a lot of male bluster in her life. So it is good to have alternatives from very early on.
I cannot overstate the power of alternatives. She can counter ideas about static “gender roles” if she has been empowered by her familiarity with alternatives. If she knows an uncle who cooks well—and does so with indifference—then she can smile and brush off the foolishness of somebody who claims that “women must do the cooking.”
ELEVENTH SUGGESTION
Teach her to question our culture’s selective use of biology as “reasons” for social norms.
I know a Yoruba woman, married to an Igbo man, who was pregnant with her first child and was thinking of first names for the child. All the names were Igbo.
Shouldn’t her children have Yoruba first names, since they would have their father’s Igbo surname? I asked, and she said, “A child first belongs to the father. It has to be that way.”
We often use biology to explain the privileges that men have, the most common reason being men’s physical superiority. It is of course true that men are in general physically stronger than women. But if we truly depended on biology as the root of social norms, then children would be identified as their mother’s rather than their father’s because when a child is born, the parent we are biologically—and incontrovertibly—certain of is the mother. We assume the father is who the mother says the father is. How many lineages all over the world are not biological, I wonder?
For many Igbo women, the conditioning is so complete that women think of children only as the father’s. I know of women who have left bad marriages but not been “allowed” to take their children or even to see their children because the children belong to the man.
We also use evolutionary biology to explain male promiscuity, but not to explain female promiscuity, even though it really makes evolutionary sense for women to have many sexual partners—the larger the genetic pool, the greater the chances of bearing offspring who will thrive.
So teach Chizalum that biology is an interesting and fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm that cannot be changed.
TWELFTH SUGGESTION
Talk to her about sex, and start early. It will probably be a bit awkward, but it is necessary.
Remember that seminar we went to in class 3, where we were supposed to be taught about “sexuality” but instead we listened to vague semi-threats about how “talking to boys” would end up with us being pregnant and disgraced? I remember that hall and that seminar as a place filled with shame. Ugly shame. The particular brand of shame that has to do with being female. May your daughter never encounter it.
With her, don’t pretend that sex is merely a controlled act of reproduction. Or an “only in marriage” act, because that is disingenuous. (You and Chudi were having sex long before marriage, and she will probably know this by the time she is twelve.) Tell her that sex can be a beautiful thing and that, apart from the obvious physical consequences (for her as the woman!), it can also have emotional consequences. Tell her that her body belongs to her and her alone, that she should never feel the need to say yes to something she does not want, or something she feels pressured to do. Teach her that saying no when no feels right is something to be proud of.
Tell her you think it’s best to wait until she is an adult before she has sex. But be prepared, because she might not wait until she’s eighteen. And if she doesn’t wait, you have to make sure she is able to tell you that she hasn’t.
It’s not enough to say you want to raise a daughter who can tell you anything; you have to give her the language to talk to you. And I mean this in a literal way. What should she call it? What word should she use?
I remember people used “ike” when I was a child to mean both “anus” and “vagina”; “anus” was the easier meaning, but it left everything vague, and I never quite knew how to say, for example, that I had an itch in my vagina.
Most childhood development experts say it is best to have children call sexual organs by their proper biological names—vagina and penis. I agree, but that is a decision you have to make. You should decide what name you want her to call it, but what matters is that there must be a name, and it cannot be a name that is weighed down with shame.
To make sure she doesn’t inherit shame from you, you have to free yourself of your own inherited shame. And I know how terribly difficult that is. In every culture in the world, female sexuality is about shame. Ev
en cultures that expect women to be sexy—like many in the West—still do not expect them to be sexual.
The shame we attach to female sexuality is about control. Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or another. If the justification for controlling women’s bodies were about women themselves, then it would be understandable. If, for example, the reason was “women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do.” Instead the reason is not about women, but about men. Women must be “covered up” to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men.