I’ve written about women for six years now. This is the same as writing for women. What this means is, not that I understand women more than the next guy, but that I have honed the skill of bullshitting. I also, for close to two years, wrote for a purely male audience and so I’m privy of a few nuts and bolts of it. And so I know writing for women is not quite like writing for men. Women are indeed more ardent readers, and perhaps more faithful readers, but also women read with more diligence, they read with more purpose and thirst. Women pick nuances and they have the most uncanny recall power. They tend to read with a fine tooth comb. They are into minutiae. And they read between the lines. Women are excellent with feedback; they write back to say they loved or hated a story. Men? Too proud, but if they meet you in a bar they will say they liked/hated something you wrote. Then they will buy you a beer.
You would imagine that after all this time writing for women I would understand women, I don’t. Women, to me, still remain a mystery, a baffling and ominous splotch in an X-ray chart. Is it exasperating? No, there is beauty in writing about something you don’t quite understand, it’s about chutzpah – that bullshitting thing again.
I live with three women (well, one is a mini-woman) and being the only man in my house doesn’t make my life any easier, and it certainly doesn’t make me more adept to understanding women. But I’m better than the next guy because I can always see an impending storm and avert it…by fleeing. I can also deal with moods slightly better- but only because I have to. And I can deal with coded talk ; long before men figured that when a woman says “it’s okay, don’t buy me anything for my birthday, I don’t find birthdays a big deal,” was a trap, I was already ahead.
But to write for women and to write about women you got to love women. Yes. You got to be very curious about women; emotionally, physically and even sexually. To be attuned to women you got to listen to them even if half of what they might be banging on about doesn’t make sense, or is a repetition from the previous week. I, unfortunately, don’t have that skill to listen raptly; my handicap is my threshold for attention; I get bored very easily. I drift. But the few things I pick, I construct rationale around it. It’s in my best interest.
And so when a reader here suggested that I write about women, like I did about men here sometime back, I thought “why the hell not? Sticking my foot in my mouth is my favourite pastime after all.” So here we go, to the eternal question…who is a woman?
A woman knows her man. Most women don’t know their men. Sure they know what dish they like, or what color of shirt they prefer or what gets their goat, but they really don’t know who their men are. A woman can date a man for three years, maybe even live with him under the same roof and yet one day the man does something so “out of character”, something that elicits a typical female response, “that was so unlike Peter!” It’s laughable because actually that was Peter. The greatest tragedy is that women see their men in their own image. So yes, a woman should know her man and if she doesn’t she tries to know him…without following him everywhere.
A woman doesn’t lick a can of Redds, or her bottle. It’s tacky. A woman knows how to keep down her alcohol. A woman doesn’t think drinking like a fish makes her cool, that partying constantly makes her urbane and suave. And that’s why Nairobi is full of chicks and not women.
A woman is inherently moody. It’s their hallmark. Her moods change without warning. A woman also knows that she isn’t defined by her career, that not any amount of degrees will validate her. A true woman gets her degrees to serve her intellectual curiosity and nothing else. It’s okay if a woman didn’t know how to cook. But she has to want to learn.
A woman doesn’t let her girlfriends run her relationship. A woman knows that cleanliness is next to Godliness and so a woman who smells like a mechanic in downtown Grogon is half a woman; inexcusable. A woman cries, mostly without solid reason, but sometimes with reason. But a woman who cries soon after sex is a keeper. I repeat…OK, you get the idea.
A female who sees a suffering child and feels pain in her chest is a woman. A woman who has been failed by her womb is also a woman, perhaps even more of a woman than the one with children because she carries an ugly pain, need and guilt unbearable to man. A woman doesn’t poke strangers on Facebook. A woman doesn’t steal; an idea, a concept or money. But she can steal another woman’s man. And why the hell not? A woman who has her man stolen from her had no business being with that man in the first place. She didn’t own him. You gotta own your men ladies! (This last part is best delivered while thumping a bible)
A woman is jealous. A woman is kind and tender. A woman is vindictive and calculating. A woman is craftier than a man, sneakier than a man even. In every woman lies astounding evil. A woman doesn’t dance to the song bend over, that’s for girls. A woman sometimes buys a man a drink. Oh hell, who am I kidding, not in this city! A woman knows at least five love songs; if she knows less then she is cross dresser. A woman doesn’t talk with food in her mouth. And she doesn’t pick her teeth in public. A woman doesn’t fart. Okay, not loudly.
Sometimes a woman has to fake an orgasm because men live on a staple diet of vanity. A woman respects herself and if she dare ask how then an explanation wouldn’t do her any good. A woman sits with her legs crossed. A true woman doesn’t need to “be a man,” unless her womanhood is waning. A woman doesn’t wear Sahara shoes, unless she’s a painter or she is an apprentice deejay at Madhouse. A woman is not defined by the size of her boobs or the size of her ass. But! It would be nice if she had an ass on her because, come on, ass is king…I’m just saying.
A woman preserves her dignity by not sleeping around. A woman prays because a prayer from a woman is a powerful prayer. Plus I secretly suspect God favors women. A woman is a lousy driver, even the ones who think they are great drivers (Tets?). A woman shops and spends money she doesn’t have.
Sometimes a woman- especially the hot ones like Eva Longoria- is cheated on. It’s never a reflection on the kind of girlfriend/wife/mother/fiancé you are; it’s an inexplicable reflection of manhood flaws. A pompous woman who is obsessed with her beauty is never worth any man’s time. A woman takes pride in how she looks, which is to say a woman with a forest in her armpit and dirt under her nails is a woman who can’t take care of her man because she obviously can’t take care of herself. A woman who dates for money is a soft whore, but then again a whore is a whore. A woman tells her man to fuckin’ straighten up his act if he slips. That’s a woman to respect. A woman isn’t scared to be judged, not if she knows who she is.
A woman has to have a plan. Any plan. A woman knows when to walk out. A woman has a bar which she has to be treated, if she compromises this bar once by lowering it, then she changes the composition of her relationship. A woman never stays with a man who beats her up. Or a man she beats up. A woman doesn’t sleep in a tired Kibaki Tosha tee-shirt for chrissake! A woman, even a broke one, takes pride in her dignity because that shines brighter than a 45carat diamond. A woman holds her man’s hand because men – even though they may deny it – need a lot of guidance.
A woman observes oral hygiene. A woman cares for her mother. She holds the family together. A woman doesn’t compete with his man because she will surely lose because men were cut for brinkmanship, it arouses them. A woman who says, “I don’t know what happened, I swear I normally don’t do this,” is a liar. A woman watches her decibels when laughing, unless the joke is really funny.
A woman doesn’t pick her nose. A woman says “fine” when it’s not. A woman waits a whole week to watch the wedding show. A woman doesn’t eat like a man. A woman doesn’t constantly get on Facebook and profess undying love on her boyfriend’s wall; it’s insecure, exhibitionist and childish. Let girls do that. A woman will read this and see the ugly head of chauvinism bobbing just beneath the surface and she will smile wearily. A true woman loves sex…with a man. But if she prefers it with other women then she’s not a woman but our boy. A woman loves sand between her toes and the sun in her face. A woman should never be embarrassed by her sexuality. A woman doesn’t need to know how to milk a cow. A woman doesn’t whistle. A woman never tells the exact number of men she has slept with, but if she is crazy enough as to do so, we will add five more guys on top to get the exact number.
A woman loves herself first before she can let a man love her. Never the other way round because the hardest woman to love is one who doesn’t love herself. A woman gossips. A woman, just like a man, is imperfect and isn’t all together shocked by it. A woman doesn’t seek a perfect man but if she really has to then she buys a Daniel Steele. A woman shouldn’t judge me from this article (hehehe).
A woman who likes making love in pitch darkness has deeper running issues than she knows. A woman learns to appreciate her body (even if it looks like a Tellytubby) but if she can’t then she joins a gym damn it and she works hard on it! A woman listens. A woman can sooth, to silence, a wailing baby. A woman is a decision maker because women’s intuition is supreme. A woman fears rats and bats. A woman takes three days to reverse a car into a parking lot. A woman never, and I mean never, pays rent for a man, and if she does then she’d rather call him Jackline, not Jack. A woman hides her man’s “nakedness” in public, she protects him. A woman should smell good…not necessarily expensive, but good, because there are women who wear expensive perfume but still smell cheap. A woman can smoke if she wants to, it’s her lungs, and hell admit it some women make smoking so damned sexy, like Christina Hendricks in the television series Mad Men. Talking of which, a woman loves Don Draper, because he is what most of us men aren’t.
A woman has read Secrets. A woman prays, eats and loves. “You are the best I ever had,” only a woman will tell you that, but that’s not even the sad part. The sad part is that you will believe it. And lastly, a woman isn’t afraid of hitting her thirties because it’s in her thirties that she really begins to understand and enjoy her womanhood.
That’s my twisted take on women. What’s yours?