Redefining Beauty

Yesterday an eclectic group of talented and fascinating women met at the maiden edition of 'The Inspire Series Event' to discuss a topic that though targeted at the womenfolk, has plagued all of mankind since forever; Beauty.
Issues were examined...
"What is Beauty?"
"Who is Beautiful?" Is it the woman with the flawless skin or that other woman with the amazing persona that lights lives?
"Where does beauty really lie? In the eyes of the beholder (as touted since God knows when) or in the heart of the holder? I'm I (not) beautiful simply because YOU pronounce me so or is my 'beautiful quotient' a factor of some self-discovered truth that cannot be tarnished or dismissed by the fleeting opinions of others?
"How do fame and societal judgment marry where beauty is concerned?" Do I get forgiven my physical inconsistencies because I'm a celebrity or does that status bring my spots and imperfections under more spotlights and invite more unsolicited beauty consultants to my vanity chest?
"Should I feel the need to compensate for not meeting up to society's beauty standards?"
"So by genes or a lifetime of sacrifices and self deprivation, I have some how checked off all of society's beauty-must-haves (like that's ever possible!), where do I go from there?"

These and many more questions were raised and brilliantly answered by people like Inspiration FM's Wanawana, the inspiring Glory Edozien (the event's organizer), OAP, Oreka Godis, Gidi Up's creator, Jadesola Osiberu and notable makeup artist, Lola Maja amidst others.

I dare to speak on behalf of the lovely ladies who were at the event in saying that the time spent in that room full of open hearts was time well spent. I also want to believe that attendees left there with a clearer sense of responsibility (not just to themselves but to posterity) as regards defining beauty concepts vis-a-vis other virtues.

I may not be able to swear that "Beauty" as a concept was giving a new cap yesterday, but I'm certain that the meeting helped attendees bond over the common struggle for an understanding of what society says on the matter of beauty, what we have all learned from our different but shockingly similar experiences and the truths that we have come to know for ourselves... "I may not be as slim, as curvaceous, or as light-skinned as YOU say I should be, but what I am is enough!!!

Titilope Shonuga performing a spoken words poem

Omolara serenading attendees

MY MORE

So I was just watching a video (Shonda's Speech) of Shonda Rhimes (Creator of our much loved Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Scandal) and listening to her tell me (yes me, Nora!) how I need to stop painting blue skies and fluffy clouds about being so-and-so and actually step out and BE somebody. She thinks it’s high time I actually took steps, no matter how shaky in the direction of turning any of my many dreams to some sort of reality or another and I found myself agreeing.

It’s not that I haven’t heard this speech before…over and over have I heard it. But still as I listen to her talk it rings pure and true. It reverberates in my innermost being and causes something in my stomach (no not my bun) to uncoil. Maybe it’s the fact that I had only hours ago listened to Jason Njoku (Founder of iRoko TV) tell me (yes me… and a room full of TEDx Euston attendees and the www in general) his story about failing into success (Jason's Speech). Maybe its hearing people say over and over that ANYONE can literally migrate from the unimpressive to the relevant and lived-a-meaningful-life region that’s causing this unease on my insides and causing me to ask myself the questions:

·         “Why can’t this be MY story?”

·         “Isn’t there more to me than this life that can be summarized in a paragraph or two?”

·         “What is holding me back from daring to be more?”

and very importantly,

·         “What is THAT more that I can be?”

Ultimately, I come back to this point; the point where my thoughts get fuzzy whenever I venture along this train of thoughts; the point where most times I hit a brick unyielding wall. What IS that more that I can be? What IS that ‘more’ that is frothing impatiently on my inside, waiting for me to discover that it’s been here all along, my true self and glorious destiny?

So I start with an inventory. Who am I TODAY, right now?

I check off mental fingers,

·         I’m a HR Professional,

·         I’m a loved and loving Wife,

·         I’m an adoring mother,

·         I’m a treasured daughter (but I don’t think that counts as I had no input in that)”.

I fall mentally silent at this point and then attempt a deeper probe… surely there must be more to me. Silence still. So I go the only logical way there is to go and it’s a promise to self that there MUST be more to me. I will not live and die on a bland note! I WILL matter for something and it doesn’t have to bring fame and glory. I just want to know that when I lay my head down in final mortal sleep, it is to rest from a life well spent, not one that I barely scratched the surface of.

My question still lingers… “What is my more?”

I’ve always loved and wanted to write something worth reading… just maybe… 

Is Nigeria too Image Conscious?

I love my country... like a mother hopelessly loves that  child that she fears will eventually give her a heart attack because he has vowed not to hear word.

I can’t run away from my roots (no matter how many plans I make), I can’t turn a deaf ear to her woes (even if I fill my ears with preferred news of how things ARE working in other countries), and I can’t beat her to death with a stick (never mind how many articles I  write huffing and puffing). At the end of the day, ‘my own na my own…Naija na my own.’ So every day, I awake and carry my cross… “My name is Nora and I am a Nigerian.”

In this spirit, when I see an article like the one I’m about to share, I’m torn in 2 directions. One part of me relates to what the author is saying. I have probably said a thing or two on some issues mentioned sef. But as I progress through the article, another part of me starts to nag and squirm. It queries my patriotism for agreeing with someone who seem so uninhibitedly rude to Naija and its people (never mind that she herself is one and is careful to use the words ‘us’… ‘we’…and ‘our’ in acknowledgement of the three fingers pointing in her direction).

As I tweet about her article I second guess my action for a second or two as I think about the backlash I may get for not stating loud and clear in my tweet that “I AM NOT ON THE SIDE OF THE AUTHOR!!!” But I posted my tweet any ways ‘cause I do wonder if she is right? If we sometimes go on about the wrong stuff. I wonder (for the first time to be honest) where the people are that thought “Chai! See what Vocal Slender and that Igbo man…” whose name I can’t remember right now … “ had to go through to turn dreams to realities”.  

Does Nigeria Have an Image Problem?

By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Some years ago, a British filmmaker discovered an exotic site in Nigeria: An entire community of human beings subsisting on mountains of refuse.

And not in some remote state, but in Lagos, the country's commercial nerve centre - a city of fast cars, luxury shops and sleek folk, with women in Brazilian hair weaves and men in Ferragamo shoes.

Shortly after the Welcome to Lagos series aired on the BBC in April 2010, Nigerians around the world went berserk.

"There was this colonialist idea of the noble savage which motivated the programme," Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said of the documentary.

"It was patronising and condescending," he added.

The Nigerian just has to kick up a tornado whenever he is perceived unpalatably.

Nigeria's High Commissioner to the UK Dalhatu Tafida described it as "a calculated attempt to bring Nigeria and its hard-working people to international odium and scorn".

Online forums also went ablaze. "They are giving us a bad image," many Nigerians fumed.

Then the Lagos State government submitted a formal complaint to the BBC, calling on the organisation to commission an alternative series to "repair the damage we believe this series has caused to our image".

These patriots were not distressed that their compatriots in the oil giant of Africa were living in such squalor - that development had somehow eluded those Nigerians.

They did not rally with cries of: "There are people in our country living like this? What shall we do? How fast can we act?" No, no, no. The majority of voices were harmonised in one tune: Anxiety over their country's image.

Similarly, Nigeria was reluctant to accept desperately needed foreign assistance to fight terrorism, despite the country's armed forces being clearly overwhelmed.

We were more worried about how requesting help might affect Nigeria's image than about forestalling the wanton destruction by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

In October 1960, Nigeria was loosed from the shackles of imperialism when the colonialists packed their bags and left. But over five decades later, Nigerians remain in captivity: Foreigners control our self-image. What the West thinks of us often takes manic precedence over who we really are, what we know and feel about ourselves.

The Europeans who first landed in Africa were unconcerned when the people they regarded as monkeys equally assumed that the white interlopers were ghosts. The Germans can shrug it off when they are stereotyped as humourless; the Russians can dismiss it when they are described as cold. But the Nigerian just has to kick up a tornado whenever he is perceived unpalatably. He is touchy because he has no alternative image on which to base his confidence.

Like many Africans in the diaspora, a number of Nigerians abroad have erected careers out of defending their people's image. With indignant frowns and stern tones, they strut from one global stage to the other like superintendents, dismantling stereotypes and whitewashing sepulchres. 

This passion probably sprouts from a desire to blend into their host communities, to not be perceived as savages from some nihilistic jungle. Unknowingly, they reinforce the subconscious message that has been passed down to generations of Nigerians and other Africans: That the West's opinion of us is paramount; that enlightening and convincing foreigners matters more than discerning who we are and who we want to be. And so, when the West claps for us, we get excited. When they tell us off, we get upset. When they applaud one of us, we automatically join in applauding the person. We frantically monitor foreign opinions and we panic at the slightest hint of a negative perception of us.

We fret about the many uncomplimentary stories from our land making the rounds on international media circuits, more than about the actual negative circumstances that birth those narratives.

From politicians to intellectuals to entertainers to terrorists, Nigerians have been socialised to rate themselves in the light of Western perceptions. And as some of us have discovered first hand, the most effective way to draw the attention of our own people to any issue, is to speak to them through a Western medium.

It is unhealthy for a people's self-image to be hinged almost entirely on outside forces.

Nigeria expends too much valuable energy on sweeping dirt under carpets and stuffing skeletons inside closets. Consequently, we deny ourselves the opportunity of frank dialogue, cultural criticism and self-examination—processes that are vital for a society to advance, by which the imperious West itself has developed thus far.

Nigeria can lead the rest of Africa in freeing our people from this image bondage.

 Adaobi's article and the pictures were culled from here

(No) Help!

It saddens me that Nigeria is the way it is… almost to the point of regret of my Nationality. I was so happy when I heard that some of the kidnapped girls had been rescued. It even gave me hope. Hope there might be something in our system that hasn’t yet yielded to the corruption and ineffectiveness that has ravaged our society. Hope that our law enforcement agencies, and by association Government, could still be depended on.

But news broke not too long after, that all the stories about some of the girls haven been rescued were false. The Principal of the school has confirmed that none of her girls have been fortunate enough to be rescued by our fabled law enforcement agencies. The only girls who have gotten away from the Boko Haram Kidnappers are those who have employed their own wits and summoned courage that they probably never knew they had.

What’s worse? Is it that our Government and law enforcement agencies has failed us at a time such as this or that someone (from within the agencies?) failed to get their facts right before raising the hopes of all concerned by talks of a rescue operation that never was? What kind of people think that at a time like this, face-saving is the priority? It’s been over 1 week since these girls were taken. Our law enforcement agencies have not been able to shame these perpetrators of evil by stealing back from them even 1 of these girls. I can’t help wondering if they are all still alive and what ill treatments are being meted out on them.

It’s a day of mourning when we discover as a country that a bunch of teenage girls are more resourceful than our law enforcement agencies. It’s time to put aside our fineries for sack clothes when over 200 teenage girls are grabbed by the literal Hands of Evil and we all as a country stop in our tracks, shake our heads in despair, even shed a few tears then go on with our lives. How? Why? These girls are not dead (as far as we know) but as far as our government is concerned, it seems like their death certificates might have as well been signed. I dare say that if 200 cars went missing from a Toyota dealership, more efforts would have gone into recovering them. What are we to make of this? Are material things worth more to us as a people than lives (so long as they are not our very own)? How can we go on with our businesses as usual as if over 200 potential leaders of tomorrow have not been stolen away in the dark of night? I hate to sound like I’m obsessed with the western world, but I have no doubts that had this incident happened in America or Britain, their Governments would have gone all out to recover the girls. Our Government’s inaction (yes, inaction!!!) speaks so loudly of a lack of compassion that I fear for all of our lives. If a lack of compassion is not the problem here, then it has to be the grossest of ineptitudes. So which is it?

Updates on the situation...

http://www.bellanaija.com/2014/04/24/boko-haram-threatens-to-kill-abducted-school-girls/

Sweet Mother

I just came across this video on Youtube. I know it’s well past Mother’s Day but it was too beautiful to pass up plus Mother deserve to be appreciated every day, in several ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3xM93rXbY&feature=youtu.be

It’s just about brought tears to my eyes … that’s a lie! It DID bring tears to my eyes. I also made be proud to be a Mom. Made me feel better about all the times I thought my efforts went straight in the drain.

This video is a tribute to every Mom out there who feels undervalued and over worked. God Bless you for your labour of love!

OH GEJ!!! (2)

I gladly eat my words this morning. What?! Yes! I’m happy to announce that some of the girls that were kidnapped on Monday by the Boko Haram (BH) sect have been rescued. Read news here. There was a search and rescue operation after all and it has yielded some favourable results. Let this be a lesson to the faithless; God does answer prayers.

I can’t express enough how relieved I am for the “over 80 girls” that were safely recovered from the terrorists nor can I imagine the bravery of the 16 who escaped the clutches of their abductors. I pray that God will always give us the grace and wits we need when life presents us with unpleasant situations. My prayers remain with the girls who are still being held. My hope is that they too will be safely recovered and that they can put this horrible incident securely behind them.   I urge the good men (and women..?) who rescued the “80 or so” to intensify efforts to recover the remaining girls because I can’t imagine the rage and frustration that would be vented on these poor girls by the kidnappers.

Every morning on my way to work, I tune in to Classic FM 97.3 to listen in on their Front Page News & Analysis by Sly, Bukola and the delightful Jimi Disu. It’s a great program and most times, the analyses are spot on. But today JD decided to play the Devil’s Advocate and see things from the perspective of GEJ on his attendance of the Kano rally in the face of the terror that BH had just unleashed. So he said… maybe GEJ went to the rally because the acts of terrorism were perceived to be BH’s way of trying to clog the wheel of the Government …maybe GEJ did not want to accede to the expectations of the sect by halting all Government activities.

As a little boy I know would say “No! No!! No!!!” I beg to disagree with Mr. Disu and ask…

 “How do dancing and clapping at a rally organized to welcome Ibrahim Shekarau (a man who can’t seem to make up his mind on where to pitch his tent) back to the PDP move the country forward?! How do Mr Shekarau’s political proclivities translate to the governing of our nation?! No one says the rally had to be cancelled but did GEJ have to be there in person?! Forget the rally; does this explanation also cover his attendance of the 100^th birthday of the Olubadan?”

 Oh GEJ!!! *smh

Oh GEJ!!!

I haven’t blogged in a long while. Some of that time, it was for a lack of topics that I thought were worth the read but most of the time, it was for the lack of motivation or time to put my fingers to a keyboard (used to be “pen to paper”). Today however, I have an excess of all elements and they are all embodied in the man popularly known as GEJ.

When GEJ made his Presidential debut I thought (as did most Nigerian’s) “Here’s a man with a grass to grace story. Here’s a man who knows the pains and agonies of lack (He did say he had no shoes at some point!). Surely he would know how to bring about change. Surely he would WANT to make a difference. Surely he would want his grass to grace story to end well and probably itch a mark or two for himself in the sands of time.”

I have been so sourly disappointed on so many counts and occasions since I first entertained these thoughts that I have lost count and have I resorted to bidding time till he is relegated to the archives of the long and sad story of the brutalization of the country called Nigeria.

There are so many ills and misdeeds one could lay at the feet of GEJ but at the moment one particularly resonates in my mind.

On the morning of Monday the 14^th of April, 2014 dozens of Nigerians lost their lives in a bomb blast attack by the infamous Boko Haram sect in the Nyanya area of Abuja . Picture from the scenes of the blast depict such carnage that the weak of heart have made conscious efforts to avoid them. So desperate was the need to help the survivors that even the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr. Andrew Pocock, went and donated blood. All we got from dear GEJ was what seemed like a half-hearted visit to the scene of the blast (several other curious Georges visited the scene as well) and hear-says from his not-so-eloquent Speaker. Is it that the Brit is more concerned about the hurting Nigerians than the Nigerian President or does the sight of his own blood make him queasy?! Even if the act by the High Commissioner was politically motivated, I dare say a politically motivated move that saves lives is better than a limp handshake!

Several hours after, on the same day, some members of the same sect stormed an all-girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State and carted off about 200 students in a style similar to that in which 20 or so girls were lost earlier in January. If there have been any search-and-rescue operations by our military forces they must have been EXTREMELY hush-hush and we all know that is not the style of our government. So I’m wondering “Don’t these girls matter to Mr. President?!” and “After every terrorism attack does he just like most Nigerians check to see how close to home the casualties are and   heave a sigh of relief when all family and friends have been safely accounted for?!” Doesn’t he ever wonder if just maybe the call to Presidency might be more than placatory remarks hurriedly flung from the steps of a plane bound for some western country or another so he can hobnob with the world powers on the bill of the Nigerian people?! What does he discuss with his other power-wielding friends at those meetings anyways, because it’s definitely not how to move the nation he leads forward!

Now I get to the crux of the matter…the reason I felt moved to speak. I was not shocked by his inaction on all of the above issues after all what is new about the President of Nigeria doing nothing as the country seemingly gets ripped at its seams by the many ills that besiege us? Nothing!

What is new to me however is how loud I heard GEJ speak on Tuesday, April 15, 2014. Wow was he passionate and all fired up! What IS sad is that he wasn’t speaking at the sites of any of the calamities that struck recently nor was he commissioning the eradication of the ill that has been scourging some parts of the northern part of the country. I heard our President’s voice at its loudest ever since his rise to power at a political rally in Kano less than 24 hours after all those people he purports to lead were killed and some more with promising futures stolen away to face new futures the thoughts of which cause me to cringe with pain. And No, he did not stop at the political rally. Our Dear GEJ flew to Ibadan to felicitate with the Olubadan of Ibadan who was celebrating his 100^th Birthday! Couldn’t his VP or some other of his hypocritical cohorts have represented him at that event while he sat with his service chiefs and strategists to review the events that had just occurred and perhaps pretend to be concerned about recovering those innocent girls? No oh! Mr GEJ’s priorities are obviously different so why should he bother?

My religion teaches that where a man’s treasures are there his heart will be. What does Mr. President’s heart gravitate towards? Sometimes I wonder (GEJ being a religious man and all), what would his response be on the D-Day, when he meets his Maker and is asked the famed question ”What did you do with the Country I gave you leadership of?”

On the premise that there is still a tiny part of him that really means well for Nigeria and its people, I give this advice: The next time there is a disaster or mishap in the United States (not because I wish ill on the country but because such are the times we live in), His Excellency should grab pen and paper and take diligent notes on how Obama reacts. I am beyond doubt that a thing or two would be gleaned.

Picture culled from here