Men’s say with Bob G. Kisiki
WHAT is a lady, someone tell me. How do you tell a woman from a lady? What does it mean to be a lady or a woman? What is womanhood, and what is ladyness (my term)?
Oh, how women love to be ladies! How the plainest woman will strive to be a lady! Trouble is, if you fixed her in a corner and asked her to defend her ladyness, I tell you, you would sooner get a parrot to define all the words it ‘parrots’, than getting this lady to tell you what ladyness is.
Worse, if you followed up this ‘lady’ into her sister’s house where she lives, you should not be shocked to find the plainest girl you ever saw. So when you are the one expected to, ‘treat her like a lady’, you get confused, trying to decide who to treat like a lady, and who to handle as a good old woman.
Truth is, I would rather I dealt with the woman. For to me, womanhood is divine. Womanhood should be revered any day. For me, womanhood is the embodiment of all attributes motherly – tender, gentle, nourishing and comforting. A woman is the one in whose system life is conceived and ‘baked’; her hands mould brats into civilised adults. Now compare those traits with what different ladies have said about their ladyness:
I know a girls’ school where, to be a lady, it’s abominable that you walk fast, let alone run, when it rains. Should the rain catch you, just keep walking and sort out your pneumonia and drenched petticoat later. When you eat, don’t let anybody see your lips move, you were not supposed to wear a sleeveless top, because decent women don’t let males see their arms, etc.
What is so ladylike about not laughing out loud when something funny is said? To laugh is human, I suppose. Does it mean that to be a lady; you have to kill some of the edges off your humanity? That when you are out on a walk and you buy ice cream, you can’t eat yours until you’re settled in a building? Where’s the fun in that; where the romance that you would have, if as you ate your ice cream on the move, you have some of it drip onto some engaging part of your outfit, and would then allow your beau to wipe it away? Give me a woman any day, I prefer them to ladies.
A lady sounds more like an alien. Aliens – we don’t know their eating etiquette, their dress code, who determines what they do and how it is done… Tell me; don’t you know where women come from? So how can the source of normal women also be the cradle of ladies? There has to be a difference.
Then there’s this ‘Hey, I am a lady; keep standing until I’ve sat down. Open the door for me, pull a chair for me, feed me, lift me, adore me and worship me.’ I don’t know about other people, but in my faith we’re to worship no one else but God.
Be a lady if you want, but don’t use me in the process. It is mean of you to demand that we treat you as something unknown, when we would outdo ourselves dealing with you as something we know: A woman.
