My sister, everyone called a gazelle –
she was long-limbed, skinny, fair-
skinned and graceful. She was
incredible and I remember wishing I
could marry her as a young child! (Oh
I’m a girl by the way – but, yes, she
was that amazing!)
So, there was my sister and then the
two other boys – my beautiful
brothers! My friends used to tell me
when we were growing up – ‘’Bolupe,
your brothers are so fine, it’s simply
not right to call them handsome – they
are beautiful!’’ I mean, don’t get me
wrong, I had the regular sisterly pride
in thinking my brothers were okay
looking… but beautiful? I would be
kind enough to maybe try to see what
my friends were seeing and stare hard
at my brothers while they played
soccer outside the house or watched
their favourite movie on the VCD and
might be so inclined to believe that
until I walked in on them in the
bathroom doing a smelly number
again or we start fighting over a plate
of food and I think Nah! My brothers
remain the ugliest human beings ever!
But now that we are all grown and
each have our living spaces and don’t
have to fight over stuff, I see it! My
brothers are really, really fine!!! And
they always date fine girls… serially in
the early days yes! But that’s a story
for another day!
And then there is me!
Okay, I started out average looking till
I was all of about 8 years old when the
world started getting smaller and
everyone in the world around me just
looked really short! I mean, what
happened to all my tall uncles? By the
time I was in JSS1, guys in the
University were stepping to me and
because I had one of those ‘if you kiss
a boy, you will die’ kind-of-mums and
I did kiss a boy in JSS3 and I did not
die – In fact, I was well and alive
enough to land him a hot slap after the
delicious but quite confusing
experience and that was when I
realised that adults in fact do lie – I
really had no one to talk to about all
these emotions I was experiencing!
From JSS3 onward, I hardly had any
teacher taller than I was. And by the
way, I was not skinny – Oh No! This is
not some cute, pretty Agbani Darego
kind of story… I was big too! And as a
teenager and at an age when boys
were pretty insecure about themselves
– their voice breaking, beard (not)
growing, body just forming, I found it
tough competing with all the cute
malleable, little gazelle-like, non-
threatening creatures that were the
smaller/regular sized girls in my
classes throughout high school who
they {the boys} were more
comfortable hanging out with! And I
think it was made more difficult with
the fact I did not go to one high school
– I went to FIVE!
Maybe if I had just gone to one, all the
kids in the school would have gotten
used to the big girl in school but I kept
switching schools and school kids
would flock to my almost yearly new
class to take a peek! Mostly boys –
interestingly enough! I think I
fascinated them – I was a mystery
really and they always, always
approached me with caution! My teen
years were a rough, tough, horrible
period in my life and my physical
appearance was not all but was one of
the major causes of that! But then
again, though I had some fun with it as
well as some pretty good times with
some friends I made back then, I think
sometimes when you have had some
really traumatic experiences; they
drown out (most of) the grand
memories.
So yes, I was an ugly, fat, blotchy
skinned teenager! And my parents did
not help matters… my mum would
sometimes look at me critically, long
and hard for interminable minutes at
a time, shake her head and say ‘nibo
ni moti ri e he na?’ (Where did I get
you from?) I would wail and cry really
hard after those episodes in between
peeking through my mum’s room
window at the ‘resident gazelle’ in our
home in yet another guy’s car in our
driveway.
There were a thousand variations of
these scenes until one day… something
happened that tipped the balance –
totally changed my world around!
Two things really:
One: I got admitted into the (almighty)
University…What??? That I still think
is one of the very best experiences I
have ever had – The University meant
a lot of things to me – freedom to be
myself, shop for the things that fit my
unusual body and not rely on my
mum’s stuck-in-the-dark ages, 50s
sense of style. Especially seeing as the
‘vintage’ look wasn’t cool in the 90s. I
also got to make my own way, choose
my own friends and live my own life…
it was the sweetest taste of life I had
ever had! OH! My Lord! I still look
back and think I would have made
changes anyway even if the other
thing did not happen but maybe not as
quickly. Plus I lost a bit of the baby fat
and everyone else was catching up to
me in size – either way, the world did
not look so small anymore! But the
second and in retrospect, maybe even
more important thing happened…
I fell in love! Head over heels… I can
smell his perfume still and feel his
arms as he grabbed and gave me a
long farewell hug after 4 hours of
flirty, mostly whispered conversation
even though we were hiding out in a
secluded part of the beach we met at –
I wanted to kiss him so bad but I did
not even though he tried to! I
remember every word of our
conversation and cried when we
parted although he swears till this day
I never showed I liked him – I was that
twisted!
You see I fell in love with this
painfully ‘beautiful’ dude and for the
first time I saw myself as beautiful
through his eyes – he looked at me and
I knew! I just knew I had to be and the
fear of having him look at another: the
same way he looked at me drove me to
a 4-month non sugar diet with fainting
spells and dehydrated days.. For the
first time in my life, I was skinny and
felt beautiful – I was even almost a
gazelle.
There’s a lot more to the story but I
ask ‘What changed?’ I mean, I never
even dated the guy because I thought
he was too beautiful! And even though
I ended up dating more beautiful ones
in later years as I found myself, I
never forgot about the one ‘that got
away’ all because of a perceived
inadequacy!
Over the next couple of years, I
fluctuated between weight gain and
weight loss but I never, ever again
allowed myself to ‘feel’ ugly! Bring on
the fat days and the skinny days, the
love days and lost ones, the friend-full
ones and friend-less ones….
It might have taken meeting him to
make me feel beautiful but it took
meeting me to make me stay beautiful!
