The return of the annual beauty pageant at Lang’ata Women’s Prison got me wondering when we shall have male prisoners paraded as eye candy.
The meat market that is beauty pageant is a concept that is being fought in many progressive societies that believe these shows are just for men and by men. Women’s rights advocates have been steadfast in ending this charade. Why is Kenya still holding on to it?
The young women who take part outside of prison are exposed to many risks, most of those include lecherous men or the so called “sugar daddies.”
It is not something that would offer a long-term career to the participants except fill their heads with inane ideas that they are better than the next woman. What is beauty anyway? I like the definition that beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. Because a drunk man won’t know beauty even if it hit him in his face. However, at the right angle and lights, he will find one. The definition that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is not too far than that of the beer holder. They all see and define faces and bodies as they dim fit. How then can one woman be more beautiful than the other?
Which brings me to the idea of polygamy. For what it is, I don’t believe polygamy, in an African context anyway, is defined by beauty but rather the quest for sexual prowess and male ego.
Modern version of polygamy
An idea that started with our forefathers ought to have died during the industrial stages of any society where labour became mechanised. Polygamy was how labour force was created by our forefathers by giving birth to many children by as many wives. There were farms that needed tilling, water to be fetched and animals taken care of, not to mention warriors needed to protect the homestead.
The modern version of polygamy where Kenyan politicians trip over each other to marry many wives is borne of selfishness. It is impossible to dedicate your love to many women and children. Polygamy essentially is a social norm wrapped in emotional, psychological and in many cases financial abuse. The wealthy may just about get around to take care of everyone in a polygamous family, but the same cannot be said of an economically challenged man of four wives with 20 children. The neglect of the children in a polygamous home is anecdotally higher than that of a single parent or one wife/man homestead with just a couple of kids.
It is delusional for a wealthy man to think his money is enough to bring up a happy and well-balanced children. Because at the heart of a polygamous family is a child struggling to be heard, comforted and loved. Many African men, that includes politicians, believe the role of being the chief comforter, listener and child-hugger belongs to women only.
The irony, however, is that the man who enters into a polygamous marriage is craving the same things he is denying his child; that is to be loved, listened to and comforted. It is easier for a polygamous man to move from one woman to the other to satisfy whatever emotional, psychological and sexual needs he has, because as far as he is concerned, polygamy is there at his beck and call and the other participants, i.e. wives and children, are there at his beck and call too.
Uncared for and unloved children
There is nothing, in fact, I find so infuriating than polygamous men justifying their lifestyle by saying they replace women because the older wives can no longer take care of them. If they were not selfish, they won’t say that. They would consider the feelings and needs of the older women too.
The older wives deserve companionship in later years as much as the next older man. The notion that the lives of women end as soon as they have been replaced is a social construction by men who are selfish and think of no one else in relationships, including the children they sired.
Modern polygamy is just lecherous men running around offices and streets hitting on young women who end up being deluded with marriage, that in the eyes of the law, is held together by a very thin strip called customary law.
The poor polygamous man is even a danger to the society because producing children who are unprepared and well equipped to deal with the modern world as the poverty that was forced on them left them behind. In some cases, polygamy is just an easy route for an incompetent man to transfer his problems to the next woman hoping she won’t see his lazy and parasitic nature.
Men can gloat all they want about polygamous marriage, but it is anathema to society and is a template mostly for producing uncared for and unloved children. It is time to stop glorifying polygamy. It is not progressive but a concept that belongs in bygone era. It is selfish of the men who partake in it.
