06

Apr

2007

Why the short and ugly are married PDF Print E-mail
By Dele Oluwole

 by Dele Oluwole 
 
This may be thinking aloud, I can not stop trying to reason why the Nigerian ‘Bobo’  end up settling for a girl he ordinarily would not go near at his ‘hay’ days when he was a risk taker, but now want to spend the rest of his life with seeing he has now become a risk averter. 

 

When I look around I see nothing but guys who have settled for girls that they have better looks than, especially my ‘loaded’ friends. Each time I was going to be introduced to my friends’ spouses for the first time I was expecting to meet women of sophistication, elegance, and beauty, but instead at the end of the day the best among them was just okay. Whereas, these are guys that when they were in their ‘hay’ days, what I would call their ‘Shongo ode’ I mean when they painted Akoka and Yabatech red will not even dare to talk to such girls.

The decision to choose a life partner is not for the public to debate on which is why I couldn’t summon courage to ask my friends …… ‘but Bros this is the worst of all the girls I have seen you with’. I remember an experience some seven years ago when some of my friends and I told one of us a Banker that his girl friend then who is now his wife was ugly. He didn’t flair up at us because we were very good friends that can say anything to one another, but calmly he said ‘Dele she’s my choice’, the countenance on his face was that of please stop right there and don’t take this any further. Trust me, I persisted and he simply told me and boasting that in ten years time we should come back to re-evaluate our careers, marriage, and life in general to know who is happiest amongst us all, he further said ‘look I am marrying her for her inner beauty, the happiness and joy she will bring to my life will reflect in my career ……. You wait and see’. 

My friend today is not just happily married with two sons but doling well in his career as he is presently a Branch manager of one of the top Banks in Nigeria. His wife has a farm that is doing well too.

Most Nigerian young men are looking beyond the ordinary; they grow to mature with time, to know that not all that glitter is gold. Between the ages of 20 and 28 they are risk takers that will go after the Ginevieves, Daregos, Omotolas, Tokunbos and Biancas. The risk taking is worth it after all as the tall and beautiful girls put them through experiences that become invaluable to them later in life. 

I have a six footer friend; we went through the NYSC together somewhere in Northern Nigeria. He did not just paint the ‘Sharia’ city red but was going out with the most beautiful Fulani girl in the petroleum Depot where we served. Every skirt chaser in the depot had his eyes on her; even the depot chief made advances through unsolicited petrol drums and cash yet the girl wanted the young, penniless, and hungry Coper. I remember an instance where one of the lady’s numerous admirers or chasers offered to give her a lift to work, the lady did not just accept the lift but requested that her Coper boy friend come on board. Guess what? They both sat at the back while they were chauffeur driven by the ‘toaster’.

The interesting part of this story is that my then Coper friend despite working in an oil company with plenty ‘ego’ eventually got married to a girl the entire family denounced because of her looks but they are happily married with a kid anyway .

 

These tall and beautiful girls can not cook because they spent more time before their mirrors than in their mother’s kitchen. Don’t joke with Nigerian man and food. They can not stand hard times because they never had such experience. How can they stand hard times when they are chauffeur driven to school in their fathers’ car, when paid washmen and cooks are at their beck and call?

The Nigerian man aside listening to his Mother’s golden advice when its time to choose a life partner wants a happy home, wants to be in control, wants to be respected, and wants a woman that the entire members of the extended family can relate with. He doesn’t want the woman that will use his monthly package to shop for the likes of lipsticks, G strings, and high heel shoes. He of course doesn’t want to come back home to prepare his own supper. He wants a woman that will instil some level of moral values in his children, how can a woman who has never ironed her father’s shirt or help her Mum in the kitchen instil moral values or bring up her children properly or even iron her husband shirt?

If you meet a depressed man find out if he’s happily married, a depressed man’s productivity at work will be so low that it may reduce the company’s turnover and eventually affect the country’s GDP.

The short and ugly is never a risk taker, she will never gamble with her chances of getting hooked to Mr right as she does not get carried away with the euphoria of beauty like her tall counterpart ‘dongo si lewo or Omo ga’. Any attempt to carry herself unnecessarily too high means she is in her own world. As a teenager she already had her cross staring her in the eyes and carried it with all pleasure. She works hard to become an achiever, little wonder she passes the O’ level and JAMB at a sitting as those dangerous boys neither distract nor have interest in her. She will do well in the University and come out with first class or 2:1 because the campus landlords i.e. the cultists don’t take her precious studying time as they will not want to be associated with her type anyway. She will get the best of jobs because she worked hard to earn her degree grade as she neither bribed her way through nor offered herself on ‘a platter of gold’ to the hyena lecturers. The society sees her as being responsible because she doesn’t wear the offensive tops, the nuclear mini skirts or the ‘help me remove’ tights that I call big baby ‘pampas’.

Finally, she will be attracted to the Nigerian man who has sampled an entire city of tall and beautiful girls because of her high moral values, sensibility, and intelligence. She will be happily married and raise God fearing children ….. and who knows if her husband’s gene is very strong she may end up having kids that will grow up to become tall and beautiful.

At the end of the day who looses? The tall and beautiful who may only get married at 37 or as second wife to the pot-belly Alhaji who junkets around the whole world leaving her at the mercy of her driver or Tailor (‘Obioma’) next door. She can only get married to the man of her dream if only she doesn’t allow her God given beauty to take greater part of her, but will she? As everyone tells her that she is the most beautiful girl in the world, and that she has the nicest legs, dreamy eyes and alabaster skin.

You can not eat your cake and have it. It is either you scarify beauty for good manners or level headedness for an Ahlaji. The choice is yours, but I am lucky to have beauty, level headedness, and brain in my wife.

 

Please watch out for 'Why the short and ugly are married II'



Your Comments

Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.

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RobotRobot is offline

 # 1 | 06.04.2007 20:26

by Dele Oluwole

This may be thinking aloud, I can not stop tryin...Read the full article.

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MsWomanMsWoman is offline

 # 2 | 06.04.2007 22:18

Dele:

Being ugly is relative! As for your friend that said he was going for the inner beauty, nobody says he shouldn't have (he obviously made a good choice, but something must have sha attracted him to her in the first instance, and it certainly wasn't the inner beauty from behind the curtains)! You have liver oh! This one that you are blatantly referring to some of your friends' wives as UGLY! And you even went to the extent of describing that couple's 411 in detail. At least one person on NVS is bound to know them keh! :D

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FjordFjord is offline

 # 3 | 07.04.2007 00:56

Dele Oluwole has written an article with confused thoughts. It is true that the good looking do have some advantage early on and later in life (there's good evidence that we're wired to be dran to beauty; there've been controlled experiments pointing in this direction), but there can't be any excuse for any reasoning, matured adult to judge or evaluate a person based on their looks. You describe your friends' wives as "ugly"; beauty, as MsWoman above more than hinted, is on the eyes of the beholder, and while you may not understand why, say, Prince Charles will prefer a Camilla to a Diana, one could take the bet that most of reasonable womenfolk (both the fair and the, ell, less-than-fair, by any standards) will prefer to be appreciated for who they are than what they look like.

Plus, your piece is riddled with unpardonable nonsense; you write of your 'short and ugly':


<*>never a risk taker,
<*>she will never gamble with her chances of getting hooked to Mr right
<*>Any attempt to carry herself unnecessarily too high means she is in her own world.
<*>She works hard to become an achiever, little wonder she passes the O’ level and JAMB at a sitting
<*>She will do well in the University and come out with first class or 2:1
<*>She will get the best of jobs because she worked hard to earn her degree grade
<*>The society sees her as being responsible because she doesn’t wear the offensive tops, the nuclear mini skirts
<*>Finally, she will be attracted to the Nigerian man who has sampled an entire city of tall and beautiful girls because of her high moral values, sensibility, and intelligence.
<*>She will be happily married and raise God fearing children


Uh! How does your #8 fit in ith your reasoning? What sort of mind cultivates these confusing ideas? You also write that the tall and beautiful cannot cook, and that ladies who may have had priviledged backgrounds have no strength of character, and you make a strong connection between ironing and cooking in the kitchen on the one hand with moral values on the other... how to say it? Na wah o! You end with a classic:

"You can not eat your cake and have it. It is either you scarify beauty for good manners or level headedness for an Ahlaji. The choice is yours, but I am lucky to have beauty, level headedness, and brain in my wife."

Good luck to those brains, yours, and hers :biggrin:

.

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el_pharoahel_pharoah is offline

 # 4 | 07.04.2007 05:32

Habba bros me, why yu de talk like dis, u wan put sand sand for all fine gyls garri, hia!!
Surely you most know that beauty/ugliness is not a yardstick for moral character!! I have come across a few nija men who have used a similar argument, as in when it's time to marry, pick an ugly wife!! I know they do this out of paranoia. It is common to hear things like "Yu don't want people looking in you house to put it asunder" and "If you get fine chick, you no go rest everybody go de chase am up and down". And that's from my brother. These men know all the bad bad things they did in their youth, YES, and they are trying to ward off the same thing happening on their own door step. I guess you make your bed, you lie in it. It just that some of these men who marry "ugly" and are apparently content can still be found chasing "fine" women up and down.

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ozoodooozoodoo is offline

 # 5 | 07.04.2007 06:34

Thank you Dele for a job well done. A word is enough for the wise.

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fowler55fowler55 is offline

 # 6 | 07.04.2007 07:26

Enjoyable article. Nice one mate. Its unfair for the above post to be overly critical.

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somebodysomebody is offline

 # 7 | 07.04.2007 07:29

I would hate to believe that the opinion of this author is shared by other Nigerian men. Your friends feel the need to marry ugly girls because they are insecure. Why should a man decide to choose an ugly girl over a fine one, it makes no sense. If you say he had to make a choice between an ugly and fine girl he was dating and picked the ugly one she was more beautiful on the inside, then I would understand. But to suggest that your friends would seek out only ugly girls tells me that you and your friends have insecurities that need to be addressed. I am a tall, fine, intelligent woman that would make a very good wife for any confident and assured man. I would certainly not want to meet men like you or your friends when looking for a life partner. Infact, I wouldn't meet even meet them, we are clearly on different thinking levels. Btw, is it that you have never met any fine woman that made a wonderful wife or you are just plain biased. What you failed to mention is that maybe your friends know the recipe for a successful marriage. Trust me, their marriages are not succesful because they married ugly wives.

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akuluounoakuluouno is offline

 # 8 | 07.04.2007 07:41

Dear Fowler, Especially Somebody,

Please take it easyoo. If you are tall and very beautiful nko and nobody has come to ask your hand in spite of your marriageability by which I mean good manners, that does not mean that those who chose short, dark and ugly women are insecure. Look at good Prince Charles, Camilla and Diana. Camilla might be representative of short and ugly and Diana of tall and beautifful, yet Charlie eventually setlled for Camillia who is of the same age grade as mama Charlie :lol: :lol:
I believe that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. One mans queen (camilla) may be another man's frog in terms of perception. I also believe that the use of those adjectives by the writer are metaphorical. :idea: :idea: :idea:

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SolidSolid is offline

 # 9 | 07.04.2007 07:45

Oluwole:

......you really downgraded the respectable marriage institution to "shopping"
for meat at "Oyingbo" market! What a skewed view of courting women? and
finally what constitutes good looks........a round face with a pointed, round, flat,
or oblong nose?........Regrettably, you just exposed the hearts of many.

Thanks,

Solid

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blondieblondie is offline

 # 10 | 07.04.2007 08:22

I do not like to use the word 'ugly' on any fellow human being. It sounds too ungracious. I would rather use the euphemistic word 'plain'. Having said that I thing it is rather puerile to say that all plain girls make good wives or that all goodlooking women make bad wives. Let's take a look at Bianca. She was once the most beautiful girl in Africa. She is also a lawyer and comes from a wealthy home. But she got married and threw all that glamour away to satisfy her maternal instincts. She is content to be a house wife and Ojukwu is not complaining. Choosing a marriage partner is a multifactorial thing. It involves the right mix of intelligence, content of character, education, religion, physical attributes and culture. Whichever ranks top on the list varies with individuals. Some people prefer to marry from their area. Some people prefer to marry educated women. Some even prefer to marry money. Some prefer to marry from their religious sect. There is no law that says that plain or pretty girls have a monopoly of these eclectic qualities. I have seen plain girls who are insuffrably arrogant, loud and lacking in manners. I have seen beatiful women who are highly educated, mild- mannerred with abundant maternal instincts.This goes vice versa.
Another thing that may work for the less physically endowed is that she may be more proactive in chosing a partner. The plain girl who realises that she lacks in beauty may make the first move in getting a guy unlike the pretty girl who is so used to guys making moves for her that her sex drive sometimes gets blunted. This is just my take.
 

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