by Mnena Nyitse

 ”Are the beholders happy with what they see? Because at the end of the day, every man wants to call his woman “SEXY”.”

If sexy is personified, I wonder what she would look like. I know there’s a male and female sexy but pardon me, I’m only interested in the female sexy for now and you will understand why, soon enough; just read on (insert wink). Popular american actress, model and singer, Scarlet Johansson, has won the sexiest woman alive for the 2^nd time in a row now, I would love to use her as my prototype but unfortunately she is far from being African; so please, join me on the quest to find the ideal sexy African woman; hehehe.

Is she plus-sized or skinny? You know how every lady wants to be a size zero; I’m sure the answer to this will just unravel the puzzle, and those of us that have being fighting to subdue our large appetites, acting like we don’t love cakes and ice-cream while we secretly crave them, will heave a sigh of relief ‘hmmm; At last!”. I once saw a hilarious write up somewhere that read “bones are for dogs” referring to the skinny ladies; also, there are other names given to fat ladies, one of which is orobo. It seems like there is a secret rivalry going on between these two extremes; I wonder which majority will carry the votes.

Would she be light-skinned or dark-skinned? With the number of ladies bleaching these days one really has to ask this one. When I was much younger, I frequently heard the phrase “black is beautiful” but nowadays I don’t hear it anymore, neither do I even see the black again sef; all I see around now are multicoloured women, in fact there are even blonde and red headed Nigerians now, I wonder if God did another batch of creation that I am not aware of (lol). A friend of mine recently made a comment saying guys have come to the point of demanding childhood pictures before they marry any fair skinned lady; but will you blame them?

Maybe she would be tall, or would you prefer short? 6 inch stilettos seem to be the order of the day for a lot of us-females, that is where a large chunk of our money goes to, not minding the effect it has on us. A lot of young women have started to develop waist and back aches, due to these ‘high rise’ shoes as I like to call them; not to mention the embarrassment of falling off them. Does she wear heavy or light makeup? To find this out, I had to ask a few of my male friends their take on makeup and most of them preferred light make up or none at all. So all our efforts to look colourful and attractive; buying expensive powder, foundation, blush etcetera just happens to have a counter effect. Someone even went as far as saying, he wouldn’t want his girl looking like a masquerade (insert surprise smiley); for someone like me who is addicted to wearing makeup, as I even joke with my friends that I don’t like being seen with my naked face, this is really heart breaking.

Lastly, does she dress modestly or revealingly? I would like to relate everything I have said, to the fact that for us-ladies, it all boils down to trends. As ladies, we love to follow trends, from clothing, to hair styles, to makeup and any other thing you could think of. In the process, we have lost ourselves, forgetting that beauty always lies in the eyes of the beholder. Are the beholders happy with what they see? Because at the end of the day, every man wants to call his woman “SEXY”.

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Mnena Nyitse is a writer. She loves to express herself through poetry.

30 Days, 30 Voices series is an opportunity for young Nigerians from across the world to share their stories and experiences – creating a meeting point where our common humanity is explored.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija