Know your worth- Don't lower your standards to please men

Silas Nyanchwani, famed for celebrating masculinity on social media and previously in a column on this newspaper, opened a can of worms when he suggested that women from well-off families are down to earth unlike those from struggling backgrounds. He claimed the latter ones set unrealistic standards for their men that they also can’t afford.

He went ahead to say it is affordable to date or hang out with a middle or upper class because they sip whatever is on the table and are very cool about it, unlike broke lasses, who scoff at “cheap drinks” and order foods they have never seen or tasted in their lives.

Of course a lot of men, who are clearly unable to wife from those cool families, cheered Nyanchwani to the rafters!

I think this “rich girls are cool” narrative only serves to massage the fragile ego of broke men and lifetime members of the Stingy Men Association. Quite sad too, because why would one eat soggy chips and chicken dripping with transformer oil and end up strapped on a toilet seat for hours when they can afford a decent meal in a five-star hotel? What would be the logic behind this? We are not saying those chipos are bad, but what’s so cool about eating them and then washing them down with cheap liqour?

Ladies, come on. Don’t be fooled by all this and lower your standards to accommodate or massage male ego by pretending to “dateable”. Musidanganywe. Setting and having standards is really sexy, especially for men who know what they want in a woman. These sons of Bathsheba will be here lying to you that they’d prefer a woman who has zero standards, who would walk in some noisy downtown club where revellers smell of stale sweat and shout to waiters in vernacular and drink cheap hooch yet in private, they are salivating for women whose standards are higher than yours. 

They be yelling how they love natural beauty and loathe a woman with “make-up” but chini ya maji, they are humping a woman with 5kg foundation on her face, fake lashes and screaming red lipstick that sticks on coffee mugs and wine glasses. Double standards, these humans.

You’ll go for a sleepover in his house on Friday, cook 36 chapos, boil managu and njahe, wash his stinking socks and two torn boxers and scrub his bathroom floor sparkling. Because? You’re trying to lower your standards to accommodate him. You want to be wifed. You don’t want to be called a woman with fake standards. Elsewhere, some Stacy is being taken to five-star hotels, doing expensive liqour, bought for expensively sinful lingerie and even has a washing machine to protect the nails for scratching his back. 

In any case, the girls in that class you call middle have already had their share of suffering and struggle while growing up. Some were born and brought up in families where three meals a day was a dream. They have had enough sukuma wiki, kunde, ngwací and nduma. They have taken sugarless porridge and at times went to bed on empty stomachs. Dude, you still want such a girl to marvel at a slice of nduma and order ugali managu on a date, all in the name of what again? Cool kids taste mutura for the first time and they aawww at how yummy sh!t is. Philegona has done mutura all her life. Why would she still find it interesting, three decades later? Come on!

These women “with fake standards” are mostly self-made. No godfather, no family name, no connections. Just them winning. The state in which they grew up have taught them that one can be born in a struggling family, but struggling in adulthood is a choice. Such babes are resilient and have come a long way to be where and who they are. She can afford herself any meal she wants from anywhere within her means. She can buy a drink of her choice, alcoholic or otherwise. Yaani , this is a woman who knows what she wants and what she deserves. And you still want her to chew sugarcane with you in the streets when she chewed enough of that stuff when growing up? Leave that to the cool kids who would be seeing sugarcane for the first time. We ain’t boarding!

Girl, by all means, set standards. It’s referred to as knowing one’s worth. If someone’s son thinks you are too fake or otherwise high maintenance for them, setting fake standards, he should just leave without calling you names. Please love yourself enough to have standards on the very basic things in life.

Whoever wants to be with you will level up to meet yours while you level up to meet his. Choose your package well and stick to it. What you want and how you want it.

Don’t bow down to those intimidated by your strides and level. Also, have a limit of what you can tolerate.