#Reflections

‘Let them see my big Yansh’!

Busuyi Mekusi

T  he human body is a container of a sort, harbouring both good and bad elements, from capacity to emptiness; ideas to diseases; virtues to vices; life to death, etc. How valuable a human body is remains the subtotal of all the socio-political and economic-religious space the inherent personality occupies. To this end, the human body helps in the performance of power, negotiation of and engagement in sexual dealings. It encases vulnerability and violence, and as well as functions as a site of limitless possibilities, but limited relevance, in the ideation of embellishment.

Regrettably, female body is peculiarly subserviently socio-culturally, politico-economically and religiously constructed in most developing societies as a site of, and for, contestations, abuse, exploitation and gratification. In global human index, the female agency and children are reckoned as vulnerable groups in the moment of insecurity, war, disaster, famine, etc. The foregoing is, however, without prejudice to the fact that the postmodern dispensation grapples with fluidly ambivalent and complicated gendering.         

 Nigeria suffices as a spatial template for violence against the body, with rumoured; dismembering of kidnapped victims for rituals, violent attack on a female police orderly, Teju Moses, by an Abuja-based professor and self-professed activist principal, Zainab Duke Abiola, for the refusal of the former to do house chores, torturing and killing of a 11-year-old maid, Margaret Joshua, by the mistress in Jos, the physical assault of a female police personnel, Olorunsogo Bamidele, by the Divisional Crime Officer and boss in Osun, for allegedly refusing his love advances, the burning of five stepchildren by an embittered man, Ojo Joseph, in Ondo, for his being allegedly refused sex by their mother and wife, etc. Definitely, female and children bodies are sites of abuse, denigration and annihilation!

Whereas the female body was a subjugated element in traditional African society, liable to being possessed on the authority of patriarchy, dispositions in 21st century dispensation have continued to return the ownership of the female body to them, rather than the rampaging voracious manliness that was a personification of oppression. To this end, rather than for the female agency to be blamed for exposing the body, particularly zones that are considered to be private, and supposedly required  to be concealed, the female body now gets adorned, clothed and deployed basically to the satisfaction of the owner, as against the expectations of onlookers who are now counselled to moderate their spectacles instead of being quick to castigate the owner of the body, that ordinarily reserves the right of discretion over the use of her body. Nevertheless, the attentions the female body attracts, mostly from males, are for the purpose of fraternal or sexual engagements. Psychologically speaking, the inspection of the female body by the owner each time it passes through a reflective object is both for the essence of consciousness and self conceit!

Walking through the paved inner road of a south western higher institution recently,  as the lightly rising sun heralded noon the fateful day, I noticed ladies at various points posing for pictures from their female friends who have become amateurish photographers, courtesy of their telephone devices that have sustainably liberalised the notion of digital photography, which has eliminated the tradition of ‘motion grounds’ that used to  be sites of pretentious posing and positioning, close to the sensibilities found in Style’s photography studio in Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead. Moving pass a lady, dressed in lady’s top and flowing trouser, sewn with Ankara fabric, the posing lady told her friend photographer to repeat the picture shots, turning sideway, and quipping: ‘let them see my big yanch’!

Yanch is a pidgin word used locally to refer to big boots. It is believed, as part of the imposition of meaning on, and metaphoric signification of, the female body, that any woman without a Yanch is not a serious contender in the matter of body politics and presumably sexual negotiation relevance. One would ordinarily wonder why the shaking of buttocks and boobs are central to remarkable dance patterns in most African societies. Little wonder, the body as an erotic figure could similarly assume the place of terrific onslaughts! It is for the purpose of body semiotics that some ladies, for instance, patronise processes that could make certain parts of their body, like the breasts and hips, bigger. It is believed that hip augmentation helps to gain ‘hourglass figure’. Hip augmentation is a cosmetic procedure that increases the size and width of one’s hips. It enhances the look of one’s legs for a shape considered acceptable to the owner of a body. The hip dips surgery, which is a fat redistribution surgery, also called liposculpting, helps remove the curvature of the hips. 

The presupposition of the photographing lady who wanted her Yanch or buttocks noticed by would-be viewers reminds us of the marketability or commercialisation of the female body. The ‘them’ qualifier of her target audience, presumably on the social media, which represent a cheap unlimited latitudes for self inscription in the postmodern era, could indicate both male and female. For males, it would be a showing in veiled erotic considerations, while it would be a game, contest or ascription of enhanced placement over others for the females. In line with the possibility of a contemporary reality nudging us towards excursion into historiography, the display of the female Yanch by the postmodern owner of the body reminds us of the story of Sarah Baartman.

Sarah Baartman was a Khoisan woman from South Africa who left her country for Europe in the 1800s, either on exploration or forced transportation. This woman was exhibited by showmen throughout Europe where she was made to sing and dance before crowds of white onlookers, embarrassingly naked. The body of Baartman was considered ‘grotesque, lascivious and obscene because of her protruding buttocks, which was due to a condition called steatopygia’, believed to be a condition ‘that occurred naturally among people in arid parts of southern Africa’, as she became the benchmark for other African women, in distinction to white female bodies.

In an apparent postcolonial effort to get back at the colonisers through their instruments of dehumanisation, some watchers have argued that the exploitation and exhibition of Baartman’s body for advertisement in Europe is similarly an opportunity for the black female body to be repossessed by the owner, with the hitherto negative objectification and commodification redirected for self gratification.

Narratives abound on how the irresistible black female bodies in apartheid South Africa got greedy white colonialists to overstepped The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No. 55 of 1949, forbidden sexual relationships across races, to plunge into amorous relationships with black women, leading to the emergence of the mulatto which I argued in the past is one of the possibilities in inadvertently building bridges between races that were hitherto ripped apart. Notwithstanding the complications inherent in mixed identities across the world, and the endless but unsuccessful efforts to preserve whiteness, the appropriation of the female body has been subjected to further pressures in the domain of complicated genders and fluid practice of gendering. The world gets queer and weird by the day!

As the tensions in the deployment of the female body rise in the public sphere, the conveyance of the female body within domestic spaces is revealing new challenges in spousal dealings and filial relationships. There have been rumoured cases of men who sexually accessed the female bodies of their maids or sister or mother in-laws who found themselves locked within the contraption of a physical architectural claustrophobic environment. It is a given that the circulation of the body within private spaces are free and uninhibited because of the suspension of mistrust and estrangement that are ordinarily attached to cross-sexual dealings. Such a relaxation of one’s guard is usually devoid of taming the combustive nature of emotions, which easily precipitates sexual transgressions. Therefore, the resistance that could be put up by a male agency when a big Yanch is at display in a removed public space would be absent when such happens at very close range. Please, do not allow them see your big Yanch!

The narrative of a big Yanch, as well as the sexualisation and commoditisation of the female body, will continue to sustain the politics about the ownership of the female body, and the values it could be used to attain par time. Not minding the unique deployment the female body might be subjected to, everything must be done reverse the designation of both the female and children bodies as sites of vulnerability, violence and exploitation. Abusers must be punished, and enticers are at great risks. Do look away from the displayed big Yanch!

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