Dark side of equality: Women competing with men to drink themselves silly

Somethings are inherently male. Girls, there are things — like peeing from a moving pickup or on a wall — which you can’t compete with men on. Excessive drinking is another perfect example.

It’s sad that, in their desperate endeavours to keep up with men and perhaps further their careers, most professional women have resorted to heavy drinking. Ladies, just because you work in typically male-dominated jobs, boozing excessively won’t help you become macho. The effects of hazardous drinking has worse implications for women than men.

I have been to many cocktails, serious ones where food and alcohol would flow from 6pm until the wee hours of the morning.

At all those cocktails, there were always the usual suspects; the gang members who ensured the bar remained open until they had their fill.

Middle-class women

Never, at any of those late night cocktails did I ever encounter a woman drinking until the end of the session. Majority of our female colleagues would make a hasty exit as soon as it struck 9pm. Even those who lived nearby.

But today, the drinking culture among middle-class women has reached the stratosphere. These women have decided that they will compete with their male counterparts. Perhaps, the contentious campaigns to have females deputise male bosses in most public appointments could be blamed for this. We even set up a commission whose only work is to wake up in the morning and ‘fight’ for women’s rights.

I think the presence of such unregulated massaging of the female ego has led to the present situation. In the era of my grandfather, it was well-documented that the neck would never be above the head, and the men were always the heads of homesteads and clans. The necks knew themselves!

But look at today. You walk into a pub and a woman will be perched on high bar stool swinging her narrow neck like there is no tomorrow. Women are not supposed to drink some drinks. I see women in many towns in this country taking drinks so potent that they would easily make an African adult male walk on his elbows. This is unacceptable. What happened to the innocence? Or at least the pretence to innocence? What happened to lady-like mannerisms?

Economically-empowered ladies

Ladies, we know you are now economically-empowered and you can afford the right drink at the right temperature. But you must remember to take the right quantities. How can I be having a drink at a joint by some road and when I go to pee, as dark approaches, I stumble upon a woman taking the giraffe pose when it wants to drink water from a pond?

Today, you send a drink to some girls at a different table and they also ‘return the favour’. This is unacceptable and contrary to what my grandfather taught me. Girls, when a man buys you a drink just swallow it and continue as if nothing ever happened. You are not supposed to return the favour, has drinking now become a merry-go-round affair?

Women are to be taken care off by men; this business of women throwing men rounds in a bar is unacceptable, unpalatable, unAfrican and unwarranted. Let me give you advice for free: No man worth his family jewels will go around whining about how he bought some girls alcohol and they did not return the favour. Now please do not confuse, the ‘favour’ here, we are talking purely about drinks. If the drink is bought with the understanding that it comes with a value-addition, then that is a different thing and any self-respecting girl should keep her promises.