Sometimes it appears as if much progress have been made in the quest for gender equality and for women in the society to be recognized as something other than sex objects. Then once in a while, we receive shockers like an intended president of a country bragging about groping women and an actual president of a country saying his wife belongs in the kitchen and bedroom. It’s the 21st century, but the last time I checked, women still earn 76 cents for every dollar men earn. What I don’t understand is why we have to have this disparity in the first place. Why do women have to struggle in the…

I am not my hair I am not this skin I am not your expectations no no I am not my hair I am not this skin I am a soul that lives within _India Arie I was told not to dye my hair so I could find a husband because what decent Nigerian man could possibly want a woman with color in her hair? And so I responded, if the “decent Nigerian man” can’t see past the color in my hair, then I don’t want him, he has no spirit of discernment and he walks by sight and not by faith, how do you expect me to marry a…

I was visiting one of those Nigerian news site one day, I don’t recall what site it had been, but I saw something that was very interesting. I saw a photograph of a young woman being crowned in a pageantry. I looked at her and was confused because she didn’t look like your usual pageant, although she was quite pretty. Then I saw the headline of the news article which read miss virginity, I didn’t know whether to be shocked or amused, so I decided to be skeptical about it. There couldn’t possibly be such a pageant in this hypersexualized day and age, maybe the news site had made up…

“Don’t call yourself a Nigerian woman, you’re in America,” was a piece of advice I received from someone who had read a blog of mine where I mentioned being a Nigerian. It was not without thought that I chose to identify myself as a Nigerian woman. I could have identified as just a woman, but that would not have given the full story. A woman could be any woman, but a Nigerian woman gave my writing a context that I wanted it to have. I was amused by this reader’s response and somewhat irritated by it (but thanks for the feedback). Partly because I have had a similar experience in which someone told…