BODY LANGUAGE
Thabo Mohlala
My 11-year-old nephew and I were recently walking down the streets of Dobsonville, Soweto on a swelteringly hot day. I had promised him ice cream and we were on our way to a supermarket.
On our way we met a posse of streetwise youngsters sporting the latest designer labels. My nephew was quick to notice their appearance: earrings in both ears, platform shoes and braided hair.
No sooner had we passed them than he posed a direct and innocent, yet profound question, which shook both my intellectual and cultural moorings. As the saying goes, easy questions are always difficult to answer.
“Those guys! They look like boys but they’re wearing earrings and have braided hair. What is wrong with them?” I wrestled with this question for some time and ended up evading it. Deep down I knew my nephew had me in a corner.
His question reminded me of a rather interesting experience. I was in a queue at the tills in a supermarket and in front of me was a person who I thought was a woman. The person was plump and, with the earrings, braided hair and high-heeled shoes, looked like a sister who lives next door, at least from my vantage point.
“Excuse me lady, can I ask you something?” I tapped on her shoulder. Lo and behold! She was a he who was so furious he did not say a word. Instead he gave me a chilling look.
When I first observed this phenomenon I dismissed it as one of the latest ephemeral youth crazes. I saw it as a trend where youths, driven by adventure, want to look the part, to be hip and acceptable within their circle of peers. But I was wrong. This is not a youth thing, but a sub-culture that is growing at such a pace that adults have taken to it with equal gusto.
Is there something we can read into this? Could it be that we have reached a point in our evolution from apes to what we are today where there is going to be such a complete erasure of gender differences that we will have no clear physical distinguishing characteristics?
Women have made some spectacular encroachments into what were known to be male fiefdoms. For instance, it was something akin to taboo, if not inconceivable, for a woman to drive a car, smoke a cigarette, lead an organisation or play football let alone take up boxing. How things have changed. Today these are norms.
A few years from now it is going to be difficult to associate any activity with either sex. Patriarchy is on the retreat as contemporary views and values that promote gender equality are clearly on the ascendant. Who knows, maybe recent developments where men seem to be appropriating the apparel and appearance of the fairer sex are attempts somewhat feeble though to get even?
It was considered traditionally a women’s pursuit to have a hairdo, search for the “ideal” waistline and stock a range of cosmetics and treatments to give their faces a deceiving ageless and wrinkleless appearance, but men are not as immune to some of these contagions as it seems.
Gone are the days where men would allow their bodies to balloon to grotesque proportions. Even those who do not use cosmetics are expected to burn some calories and sport “six packs”. Experts writing in the British Medical Journal confirm that more men are suffering from what is called a “body dysmorphic disorder a severe form of body image dissatisfaction now, compared to 25 years ago”. It would not be far-fetched, therefore, to say that very soon men will also suffer from the same eating disorders as women anorexia and bulimia.
But as you may imagine, I feel mortified that I have not been able to answer my nephew. In fact, I never thought that such a seemingly easy question could have me sweating and heaving for an answer. Maybe this is the kind of a question that could best be handled by the shrinks, because it seems to belong very much to the realm of the unconscious.
The question again is: is the new phenomenon, as described above, indicative, or an expression, of some deep desire to move towards a unisexual and genderless universe? Are we reaching a stage where we can forget about this gender thing and see ourselves only as human beings?
But, you see, as an adult, an African at that, when you are faced with a tough and potentially embarrassing question, such as this one and for which you do not have an answer, you devise ways to deflect it without losing face. I would do just that and say: molo fish! a Xhosa term used when an elder dismisses a question from an inquisitive youngster.