Introducing the bad girl to the family and clique

For bad girls, their reputation usually precedes them. When your latest catch is evidently a spoilt girl, how do you introduce her to your family? I mean everything about her screams SPOILT.

Her lips are charred from smoking. Her eyes are permanently bloodshot from the many years of hard liquor. Her hairstyle portrays her more a renegade neo-soul singer than any would be girlfriend or wife.

Think of Erykah Badu. Her dressing while African and stylish evoke a certain fierce independence that springs the word feminist to your mind.

Yet looks can be deceiving. Whereas Cindy is opinionated and has had rich past, she is the kindest and best person you know. She has put up the best show in the past two months you have been seeing her and now you have started meeting friends and occasional relatives who visit you.

But she has also become familiar with some of them and no longer sees the need to act or be discreet. She is the brilliant type who hates being caged. But people never stop judging. Everyone is intrigued by her.

Society has learnt to judge and treat women quite differently. Women with dreadlocks are supposed to be shunned. No sane Kenyan man should dare touch a woman who smokes, let alone drink.

But that who Cindy is and you will be totally unfair if you insisted that she acts up every time there is someone around she needs to be introduced to.

How you introduce a woman after a certain age matters a lot. At some age, you can’t say a woman is your girlfriend. Wife? Yes. Fiancé? Yes. Girlfriend? NO. That leaves you in an awkward situation.

Besides if she is present during the introductions, she will be keen to know the type of designation you will give her and it can hurt. One wrong introduction can have sulking the whole day.

And Cindy is neither. She knows that. But you have sworn some personal oath to inspire her. So she is not just another girl.

On one of the nights out, your boys want to know where you got her from and by their tones and their previous knowledge of who you are, they are skeptical when you tell them that you will be marrying Cindy. That is she is the one.

For men your age, there are three types of women. Those whom you sleep around with, girlfriend material and wife material. They seem to have assigned her the role of a sexual fling girl that will disposed anytime.

Your relatives were more worried about her habits. Her smoking is especially something that they are all strongly opposed to.

This kind of hostility and lack of acceptance from friends and relations can make a woman suicidal or chose the usually testy path of single-hood. It means you have to be philosopher each and every time to promise her that the thoughts of your friends and relatives about her matter so little to you.

You love her the way she is. If they judge her, that is their problem.

@nyanchwani

[email protected]