On Saturday the 19th of May 2018, I witnessed history once again in the form of a royal wedding, where an American Meghan Markle got married to Prince Harry in a grand fairytale wedding, which was watched on TV globally by an estimated populace of 1.9 billion viewers worldwide (with me included seated comfortably on my bed with some peppermint tea and my box of tissues in case my hormones crushed on each other and they did!!)
Meghan Markle experienced the fantasy of almost all women from the four corners of the world, by being swept off her feet by a prince charming. Making her a Duchess and oh he gave her a stunning aquamarine ring from his late mother’s jewellery collection. Even the car to and from the reception which was driven by the Prince himself is a vintage Jaguar which runs on electricity with registration number being the date of the wedding. What else can a lady ask for from her man?
HER PAST:
Meghan Markle a 38-year-old female activist (feminist) and an actress who had a past like most women do, being divorced due to “irreconcilable differences” after two years of marriage to Trevor Engelson a movie producer, had an ex-boyfriend who is said to be a porn star, and I firmly believe she had a past that morally did not pull her a thousand miles closer to being the Duchess of Sussex.
She had a life on social media as a blogger advocating for all types of women rights and therefore was tagged a feminist by everyone who read her blogs or listened to her submissions on YouTube. All in all Meghan Markle was and is still is a feminist like a lot of women these days tag themselves to be.
This brings me to the multimillion-dollar question, what did the Duchess of Sussex do differently that most self-acclaimed and proclaimed feminist in Ghana wouldn’t even dream of doing and yet want to land a prince charming like she just did some hours ago?
WHO IS A FEMINIST:
Let’s start by defining who a feminist is; my old Oxford dictionary beside me defines a feminist as an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women. To my understanding feminism is a political ideology that pushes the rights of women to be given equal political, social economic and personal treatment for both sexes.
This means that being a feminist is becoming the mouthpiece of women in order to be treated fairly in all aspects of their lives. There are tons of women like Meghan who started advocating for women at an early age before they even knew the word feminist. (at the age of 11 Meghan embarked on a campaign to get a company to change a national television commercial she viewed as sexist and she was successful) this tells me that being a feminist is a lot of hard work, Which involves a lot of selfless sacrifices for things to happen positively (including having a responsible prince charming sweep you off your feet).
I have searched in my dictionary, gone on Google and other search engines on my cute laptop to see the part where being a feminist is about not paying attention to a countries’ cultural practice, acting all masculine, or stop showing respect to a man and guess what I can’t find anything as such!!!
So where did the Ghanaian feminist attitude spring from?
THE GHANAIAN FEMINIST
The Ghanaian woman was introduced to women rights advocacy when the 1992 constitution gave women some level of equality, then the Beijing conference came to cement it with the 4th world women conference in 1995. I was a teenager by then. Women started claiming they can lord over men so long as the Beijing declaration has been made.
Our culture as Africans where a woman is the secretary general of home affairs including respecting men started fading off the system. The men who realized they were being trampled upon by women who had started clutching balls when in trousers and shouting “we have the power” decided to start treating the disrespectful Ghanaian women as they deserve “USE AND DUMP”, that was when the born one, born two, women like myself started evolving.
In a space of 15 years and counting it has become a norm for a woman to be a single mother in Ghana, going through the pain and struggles to cater for herself and sometimes bear the full cost of catering for her child(ren).
Some educated and culturally inclined women like myself decided to amend our ways and start going back to our roots in order to be happy one day, once again. But others decided to further aggravate the issue instead of analyzing the situation and seeing where we as women went wrong and amend our ways, these women rather became so bitter, tagged themselves as feminists and started playing the buffoonery by using loose talks and useless rebellious attitude and write-ups, and with the aid of Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platforms like Facebook became overnight bloggers writing a handful of non-factual statements to back their claim as feminists.
After years of seeing them, I have classified the Ghanaian feminists into three groups
- THE SOUR LOSER FEMINISTS:
These are women who started off by being opportune to attend one of the tertiary institutions and to show how tough they were in school, they had to sleep with high profile married men in exchange for some good cars and loads of money.
After school they decided to hang on to one of these men and have a child with him to elevate their status, after having the child, they realized there is no hope of ever being the wife so they leave the men and settle for a younger, poverty-stricken man they can control with their money, and since one can never control a man with wealth no matter what the case may be, they end up alone once again.
They then become embittered and start preaching feminism as a woman who doesn’t need a man. But trust me they have old rich men in some corner away from the eyes of society who still foot their bills every now and then. So who are they fooling?
- THE HANKY PANKY FEMINISTS:
These are the women who never had time to be properly educated, from their teenage years all they did was to use what they have (their body) to get what they want. From school grades to their first stilettoes, all they knew was to spread their legs to get them. As such they concentrated on brightening their skin through popping pills and using expensive bleaching creams and gels, buying hair with money that can feed a multitude and be living the life of a supposed slay queen.
After practically sleeping with all the men one can think of and be juggling all over the place, They one day decide that it’s time to get married, they are able to get the men, but they will all taste the ‘apple’ and leave.
Out of the numerous rejection, they one day wake up and claim the title of feminist and start preaching to other women not to indulge in cooking and cleaning for men. The truth, however, is that even if they can cook and clean like the ideal African woman, no man will still want to be with a woman who has to pop pills and buy expensive creams and extravagant hairs from all nationalities to wear on their bald head, just to be beautiful, need I talk about the amount of makeup used by the hanky-panky feminist per week?
- THE DEVOTEE FEMINISTS:
These are women who lived their lives very well by being ideal African women. But along the way their inability to have patience and really access and analyze the men they got involved with, made them victims of sour relationships, some ended up with kids and others got divorced.
Suddenly they see the sour losers and hanky-panky feminist ranting and raving all over the place and decide to join the crusade blindly. They preach feminism based on being victims to men who weren’t ready to be responsible men.
They preach their insane feminism, but deep within them are busy scouting for some prince charming to sweep them off their feet.
BACK TO THE ROYAL WEDDING:
When the royal wedding was announced, our “Ghanaian feminists” assumed the bearer of bad news position when Meghan’s father and brother started bringing out some skeletons. They preached that Prince Harry will no way marry such a lady. Then the wedding was announced and the date was set, the Ghanaian feminist, as usual, came on social media to state how a Prince is about to marry an American feminist who will not succumb to a man or royalty to be married.
Then there was news that Meghan will change nationality, and had left all forms of social media engagements and was only using her fingers to fidget her massive custom-made engagement ring. Then there was silence!
And lo and behold on the day of the wedding the Ghanaian feminists sprang up again showcasing their ignorance to the full glare of the world by saying
“She is getting married and so what?”
“This is no news, after all she once dated a porn star”
“She is older than the Prince”
Then after the wedding, some of them came out and boldly stated the Duchess married the Prince because of his wealth. This shows the level of escalated ignorance (or should I say stupidity) on the part of these women who have no idea what it takes to be a feminist.
Being a feminist or an advocate for women is not a joke. A woman needs to be a balanced analyst, an independent woman, has to respect customs, culture and practice of any country, and most importantly show respect to men. These four things are in my opinion the proficiency of a feminist which the Duchess exhibited to my admiration.
So how long will the Ghanaian feminist live in the dark room of ignorance and bitterness, instead of stepping out into the light and starting to be realistic, enlighten by reading and acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the realities of life and stop typing anything that pops into her dead brain on social media with those dry and flaky fingers that need to be massaged by a responsible and an ideal man?