What A Man Wants In A Woman

By: Chepkemoi

I met Sam four years ago. He lives on the far end street from my street and I have known him since I was a shy newbie in this Indian invested neighborhood and now, I am a bustling local.

Sam is funny, very witty and he loves wearing this blue and red sweat jacket every time we go together for an early morning run. He normally says that I should get one for myself too because these jackets help to lose fat by causing the core temperature to rise.

A few days ago, I had this very passive fight with Sam because he unapologetically stood me up the day we had agreed to have dinner in the nearby restaurant. Sam is the only man I can argue with, fight with, laugh with, and truly let my heart spill unto.

I can vividly remember the last conversation I had with Sam face to face. We had been running from 6 am and it was just a few minutes past 8 am. "You know no one is waiting for you with a trophy at the end of these tracks, right?" I asked gasping for a huge gulp of air. My heart was almost jumping out of my mouth and I was sweating like a porous pitcher.

"Okay, we shall walk briskly for a few minutes then we break into another insane run." He said jogging in one spot so that I could catch up with him. This son of a gun had not even broken a sweat and his sweat jacket was still zipped up to his neck.

So, we strolled the long way back arguing and talking about love and relationships my arm gently resting on his broad shoulders. Sam is a few inches taller than me and our eyes are level whenever I wear high heeled shoes.

I remember I argued and argued until he paused, looked at me deep in the eyes and said, “When you are a woman, you have to keep yourself beautiful all the time, be soft-spoken and confident around men and they will run tumbling on your feet."

I remember I looked at Sam incredulously, color draining away from cheeks. He had no idea of what he had just said, I could tell from his eyes and his tone- the same passive tone with which a Kenyan would say, “toa kitu kidogo” When they need to take a bribe.

I did not know exactly what to tell Sam at that particular moment. So, I pretended to brush it aside as if I did not hear a thing.

The first thing I planned to do when I got home was to write him a long message on WhatsApp about something, he seemed not to have grasped yet about some women. That some of us wear red dripping lipstick, Burgundy Full Lace Ombre human hair wigs, and high heels for ourselves and not for men at all.

Fast forward to a Friday evening at the gym.

I had just finished doing my legs and glutes and I was stretching as I waited for my friend Liz to finish changing so that we could leave together. I happened to share the space at the backside of the gym with Mose, a tall well-meaning man whom I had met at my previous gym.

Mose struck up a very interesting conversation with me. It was not a normal conversation. Mose assumed that when women go to the gym, it is obvious that they are trying to grow their asses and to seek attention from men.

What was even more interesting is that I had no interest in patrolling the gym while swaying my very small behind. But I am a woman and according to people like Mose, women only do things for the benefit of the men around them.

I often take the cliché statements that are made to us every day as women and turn them into questions that no one has ever answered. Take for example what most of us were taught since childhood, what a man wants in a woman. Thing is, what about what I want as a woman? Do I make a mistake by thinking that we have been taught one side of the story all our lives?

I don’t understand why most women fail to see what is so evident. I love being back home in the village even though I haven’t been there in a while now. I grew up where we were taught to literally serve men like kings and princes. O hail the kings!

I am often impressed by these particular theatrics that even if I am so sick and my brother walked in through the door, I have to drag and fix him something to eat. I often wondered why I had to endure the excruciating pain in my body to serve an energetic high-spirited man. So that I would know how to treat my husband when he finally redeems me by paying several heads of cows and goats was the same answer, I got all the time.

It is true that physical strength was the most important attribute for survival. But that was a thousand years ago. Today, there are other million ways to survive without ever having to rock a giant physique with rippling muscles. We are in a world where intelligence, innovativeness, and creativity has stamped down the physical strength andmasculine ideas.

Maybe we should all blame these fragile egos in our men on the callous traditions? But even if we did that, we have to be willing to go back to the drawing board and model those egos to be gentle and not fragile.

We are in a generation where we must no longer teach our girls this heinous topic: What a man wants in a woman. Rather, we should teach them to be the best they can ever be.

What if we raised both our boys and girls without all the masculine/feminine hullabaloo? What if we taught them love and equality? What if we exposed them to embrace their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and not be afraid of expressing their fears to each other? What if we let both genders know that it is okay to have feelings for the opposite sex and it is also okay to express their desires regardless of their gender? What if we were all feminists?

Queen Guest Writer Bio:

Chepkemoi is a Ghost writer and Content Creator at Upwork. She strongly believes in feminism.