Strange erotic senses: Eight weird things that turn Kenyans on

Gerald fondly refers to his favourite girlfriend as “Big Mama” and proudly talks about her whenever he is with friends. The reference in no way points to her position in his life - the man has a wife at home - but it makes no secret of her sheer size.

“Big Mama” is heavy, what political correctness now dictates we call plus-size, an unlikely candidate for a girlfriend to a young slender man in his late twenties.

She is not curvy, she has curves upon curves and ‘tyres’ around her tummy - just the way Gerald loves them. To him, she is the ultimate turn-on, a woman with “something to hold on to,” never mind that she is not what a hot woman is “supposed” to look like.

The much-maligned potbelly actually has a fair share of its fans even among men. There is something about that ‘tyre’ or some remaining baby fat that makes some men go gaga.

“When we are relaxing with my wife, I like rubbing her stomach and feeling the soft, fluid-like skin move under my hand. It makes her relax too, especially when we are watching a movie alone,” Stephen says. He thinks a potbelly looks good on a woman.

Insisting that she speaks for many women, Irene also talks highly of men with potbellies and says that the famous six-pack is, at least to her and a number of friends she knows, unappealing.

“A six-pack does not look natural, more like something that has been chiselled out of the body and can only look good on statues. I like ‘pots’ and the sight of a protruding tummy turns me on,” she says, adding that to her, it is proof that the man eats well and therefore can take care of himself.

Another surprising turn-off in this category is muscular men. While those bulging biceps make many women go weak in the knees, others find ‘pumped’ men unsightly and “looking like a beast.”

BUSHY, UNKEMPT HAIR

Beauty actually lies to the beholder, more so in a world where the tall, dark and handsome image is pushed for men, while women are supposed to be an almost impossible balance between curvy and petite - the famous ‘laptop,’ portable, but with all the desirable features in place.

“I like men who leave their hair bushy. ,” says Lucy before going on to explain how the feel of a man’s rough beard on her skin takes her to cloud nine.

On the other hand, there are those who say they like bald or balding men and others even men with streaks of white hair. Some men too, find lots of hair appealing.

“Nothing is as sensual as a woman who has hair - everywhere. I don’t understand why women subject themselves to the needless pain of Brazilian waxing because I like it naturelle,” says Tom with that French twang before taking a sip of his drink amidst pearls of laughter from those sitting around the table.

Tom is a swanky man in his early thirties and says that the feel of body hair is good; the unshaven legs and armpits to him are a sight to behold, especially during those intimate moments.

Those close moments are especially strange for others. While most insist on strict hygiene, some women have been known to prefer the smelliness that comes with a little perspiration on their man.

“I used to have a girlfriend who used to like me just when I came in from my morning jog or from work, after walking around for a whole day and when I was feeling a bit uncomfortable because of the sweat and stickiness,” Richard contributes to the debate, recalling how it took him long to understand his “unhygienic” girlfriend.

Another one, a smoker, remembers how his girlfriend used to go gaga whenever she came close to his breath after he had had a cigarette to a point that she used to tell him to go outside and enjoy a puff. “Ordinarily, she would try to make me quit the habit, so I used to find such moments quite confusing.

One day, as we were curled together, she told me how she enjoyed kissing just after I had smoked and it all made sense, somehow,” he says.

Every time they would come back home after a night out, she would be even more of a tigress, since he would have spent the evening drinking and smoking quite a number of cigarettes. Ironically, she never smoked and even never wanted anyone to smoke near her.

Recently, a comment on Twitter referred to Serena Williams - the number one women tennis player - as “built like a man” and set the Internet ablaze with comments and accusations of body-shaming.

Perhaps, unknown to the author of the comment, those big biceps, defined forearms, huge shoulders, defined thighs and bulging calves are what visually attracts many men who can only wish they could get the chance to be with her.

Growing up, Peter confesses that he always found athletic women very attractive and as an adolescent, he would never get enough of female Jamaican and American sprinters who dominated the short races. The likes of Marlene Ottey, Gail Devers and Marion Jones were some of his early teenage crushes.

Needless to say, he too, finds Serena Williams very sensual. Her and Leila Ali, whom he says is made even more sensual by the sport she dominates; boxing. Men are said to be visual creatures and will usually find a trait like that heating their hormones to the boil. Beautiful eyes, sizeable behinds, long curvy legs or full chests are among the attributes that will top many lists of men.

NO PICKET FENCES

However, there are those who go for other, sometimes awkward, attributes. While straight teeth are considered the perfect set for a smile, Johnson finds women with a chipped or crooked tooth very inviting. He says it is the first thing he notices when a girl smiles or strikes a conversation with him.

“It looks like a perfectly sculpted imperfection, not a neatly arranged picket fence-like set of teeth,” he says, at pains to explain this seemingly petty quality.

The feet are as non-sensual as organs come, yet foot fetishes are well-documented, especially among men.

It has been suggested that the ancient, painful, custom of foot-binding in faraway lands was a form of fetish and women tried to get the perfect shape. Today, there are those who fantasise over their ideal feet shape, properly pedicured and maybe adorned with anklets and toe rings.

Conversely, there are those who find ugly feet an instant turn-off, with ‘ugly’ being a very relative term. Just having big or wide feet is an instant game-killer for some. In a series of photos that were recently leaked to the media, a man is in various states of a compromising position with different women.

One characteristic stands out in all the damning photos, all the women are in knee-high boots, which they do not remove. Throughout his high school years, Moses was the subject of ridicule in school, thanks to his shapely and feminine looking behind. The bullies in the upper classes had even nicknamed him “Esther” and questioned his orientation.

Now happily married, Moses remembers how some women would walk up to him and openly admire his derrière. “Some would even ask to touch it, making me quite uncomfortable, since as a man, I am the one society expects to go out and touch, not the other way round,” he says of something he no longer finds strange since he believes quite a number of women actually ogle at men’s backsides.

Davidson, a writer, is one of the men who find the sensual glow in a woman perhaps - at least for purposes of procreation - a bit too late.

“Women who are expectant have a certain glow that I cannot resist, it is as if the life within them is exuding radiance through their skin and that really turns me on,” he says and admits to actively hitting on pregnant women with a fair degree of success.

According to him, that is the best time to be with a woman, apparently even physiologically because her temperature is high.

“A woman in that state is even more receptive, since most men wouldn’t even give them a second look or are afraid because they imagine they will injure them,” he says with a chuckle.