First, they wanted tall, dark and handsome. Not just the kind of tall that can overcome Kikuyu landlords and their sky-high kitchen cabinets. Not only the kind of dark that goes well with a peach shirt.
And not just the kind of handsome that is visible even on a national ID.
No, they wanted movie star handsomeness, as in Idris Elba or Michael B Jordan. They wanted darkness as a personality quirk, not a skin tone.
For a period, the minimum entry requirement was a thick, glistening beard. One that stretched from ear to ear and wrapped the entire bottom half of the face with coconut-scented thistles. The thicker the better. If it was spattered with flecks of grey, even better. And if it parted to reveal full, African lips with pinkish hues, well, then people had to hide their daughters.
And then, when the beard care industry was just beginning to take off, they decided they wanted to see a gym membership before they could give out their phone numbers. A lithe, well-toned physique has always been in vogue; as soon as Australopithecus straightened his spine, he embarked almost immediately on the ancient and noble pursuit of a six-pack. It is a practice that has endured to this day.
We need a man who can pin us against the wall, the ladies said. Or lift us up and throw us around like a used serviette. He should be strong enough to knock someone out, but also gentle enough to never consider it. Basically, those big, rippling muscles were going to be functionally useless, unless a thug needed manhandling. But, if his lady was bored, the owner of those muscles could always jiggle and flex them to entertain his lass.
And so gyms cropped up everywhere. Men downloaded workout apps and started eating salads and fasting intermittently. Kenyan roads witnessed an invasion of chubby men panting in tight shorts and neon-green jumpers. Look at your stomach, someone asked. Are you happy? Ouch, men said, wobbling their midriffs sadly. Then they put the beer bottles down and picked up a spinach smoothie.
But even before those gym memberships had found a home in the back of the wallet, men heard the news that the goalposts had shifted once again.
It was good to have all those things, but at the end of the day, is there anything more important than intelligence? So now they were all sapiosexuals. They wanted big brains, not big pectorals. They were attracted to a man whose table was littered with literature. They suddenly remembered that the mind is the greatest aphrodisiac, as wahenga said, and not the depth of one’s pocket.
It is around this point that the fellas started smelling a rat. This was a game, they realised, and they slapped their foreheads in unison, jolting themselves back into reality.
These women had no idea what they wanted! They would never stop shifting goalposts! Nothing would ever satisfy them! If only someone had warned men before they paid for those beard stimulants!
Someone did warn them, as it happened. Their forefathers. Real men, those ones, because how were they ensnaring women way out of their league with afros and Colombo pants? How were they doing it, without exfoliating every day, dressing like insurance salesmen and lifting cement blocks every evening after work?
Well, they adopted the philosophy currently known as ‘Sisi ndio tuko’. It probably went by a different name then, but the spirit behind it was the same: those women could sing about their fantasy mates until they were blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it is those scruffy civil servants with afros they would be going home with.
‘Sisi ndio tuko’ is a philosophy men need to internalise. A code to live by, as it applies to more spheres of life. Rather than kill yourself to fit a fabled beauty standard that changes more times than the mind of Azimio’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, take pride in the unique creation that is you. So what if you have a cute little pouch? So what if you’re neither tall nor dark, and if you’re only handsome at 4 am after 18 beers?
Otherwise, Michael B Jordan is freshly single. Women are welcome to try their luck.
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