Woman To Woman

Life would be easier for me if I was the type of person who surrounds themselves with tons of people and if I had a million friends and no meaningful friendships. I suppose I could go out every weekend and paint the town red and not be content to stay at home and have an intimate conversation about the state of my life with my closest friends.

I’ve railed about reality television. But there is something else that bothers me about celebrities. Why is it when celebrities throw a party of and invite hundreds of people we hear that they “invited two hundred of their closest friends”. How close are your friends to you if you need two hundred of them?

For me a friendship is something intimate. Maybe because some time in my young life when I was most melancholic I had so many people around me and I still felt loneliness. And when I started cutting my so-called friends out of my life and I was left with only three girls who got me and loved me, I didn't feel a need to pretend to have it together when I didn't.

My friendship acid-test is asking myself: When all chips are down who will I call? That's how I know who is closest to me.

I am blessed to have a fabulous, down-to-earth God fearing mother. I feel like my mother lifts me when I’m down and no matter how much I mess up, I know she’ll be there to pull me through. She is tough talking, she pushes hard and expects so much from me. Yet she is loving and compassionate. My mother is not my friend, nor has she ever wanted to be. Her role in my life is to guide me, even if I feel like I don’t want the guidance. This relationship is a foundation for so many other relationships. A lot of who I am, is because of who my mother is (only the good stuff!)

I am also blessed to have a sister who is also my bestest friend. My sister will walk through coals for me. We are alike as we are different. We fight furiously, and we also love with the same intensity. If I’m down she feels like it’s her responsibility to lift me up. I can tell her anything and know that it won’t go any further. She tries to fix all the brokenness in my life and I love her for it.  Hell, if all my friends turned against me I know she’ll still be there to hold me up. I suppose having her around makes it easier for me to shed the unhealthy relationships I have in my life.

I also have fabulous female friends. About three. At most. Really. It’s not that I can’t stand other women. I love women around me. It’s just that I hate being lied to, even with good intention. If something in my life is broken and I can’t see it, I want my girl to tell me this. I want friends who know me, and really care to know me. They must know the good and the bad and accept both. It’s taken me years to realise that I need friends who are strong, maybe not in the way I am but strong none the less. I want friends who put in the time to call me a friend, just like I should put in the time to call them friend. I want friends who can look beyond the cosmetic and dig deep.

In my life I have also been blessed with a female boss.  And really, the three above relationships form a basis of this relationship going in. I didn’t get here and think she’s a woman therefore my enemy. When she corrects me, I listen and try to heed her advice without taking it personal. This does have a lot to do with the kind of females I have around me outside of work. When my girls disagree with me, they tell me so. They aren’t afraid to criticise me and praise me.

I don’t have space for pettiness in my life. Seriously. I had a friend once, I’d do something and she wouldn’t tell me then months later, amidst a crowd of people she would reveal my sin for all to hear. I hated this, and I told her this and yet she still didn’t get it. Another old friend of mine hates praising another woman if it might be construed that the other female is better than she is.  Telling another woman she looks good doesn’t mean you are saying you don’t.

I wish we would get to a point in our lives as women where we don’t feel a need to pull each other down. Where we accept each other and stop tearing down perfectly good woman to woman relationships because we feel insecure.

To the women in my life, my life is so much better because of you. Love you! Happy birthday Mom and may you see many more beautiful years!

PROPOSED PROTECTION OF INFORMATION BILL AND THE MEDIA APPEALS TRIBUNAL

The powers that be would like us not to react to this proposal until it’s too late. A few puzzling legislations have been put forward this year. The first was a ban on internet pornography. Most of us didn’t object and I was one who thought it a good idea. Mainly for the reason that there is nothing that annoys me more than porn pop-ups. You go onto a site to download music and what do you know, a pair of oversized silicone tits greet you. Very annoying. So I said yes, internet porn should be banned!

And then the Protection of Information Bill (proposed section 75) crept up. In the beginning I didn’t react. I didn’t realise what was at stake. So, like all things I don’t like, I ignored it and thought the storm will pass. There is no way in hell this will be taken seriously, especially not by comrades who fought in the “struggle”. And then it hit me. Not out of the blue, mind, but through a slow building media campaign against the bill.

I listened to the debates on radio and I read the blogs and the newspaper articles and columns. And the ANC was making valid points and so was the media.  But then I thought again. I thought why would such a bill be necessary? How would it affect me? And could this be the start of “Big Brother is Watching You”?

I don’t dispute that some information should be kept confidential for the security of our country. Citizens do not need to know everything. Which is why the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Act No. 2 OF 2000) exists, to ensure that confidential and sensitive information is protected. But should the mismanagement of public funds be deemed as secret information?

What bothers me with the whole debate is the establishment of a Media Appeals Tribunal. Fining journalists and throwing them in jail for publishing public interest stories is a bit extreme. As long as I pay my taxes I should know where that money is going and how it’s being managed. When I hear members of the ruling party say that journalists who write stories that don’t contribute positively to the South Africa that they are building should pay fines and thrown in jail for daring to write such stories is a little scary. Not all stories can be positive. Corrupt officials should be exposed. Heinous crimes need to be reported on.

There is information we can protect but let’s face it. Information is power. If I live under a deluded cloud that South Africa is a gun free zone, I’ll be tempted to leave my doors unlocked at night. And how will I know which party to vote for if information regarding the misdeeds of certain parties filtered?

Maybe that is the point of the bill. But think about this scenario. If it starts with journos being thrown in jail. The next stop will be you being fined for stuff you post on Twitter and Facebook. After that what you read will also be regulated. Then after that which church you go to or what you believe in, then it will be who you are in a relationship with and a before you know it you are living in George Orwell’s 1984 where the government is never wrong and everyone who dares question their decision can be thrown in jail. Sadly, that is the implication of not having press freedom in a country.

No matter how many good points the ANC comes up with for this bill and tribunal will I ever be convinced that it is the best thing for South Africa because it may not be this government, or the next government. It might not be used negatively for the next fifty years or so, but somewhere down the line someone is bound to abuse it and take us back to apartheid. It wasn’t so long ago that the only information available was propaganda, newspapers were censored, books were banned, journalists thrown behind bars and writers were forced to flee the country. Why do we want to go back there?

What's On? (The rubbish on our TVs)

I'm not much of a TV person. Give me a book, put on some good music and I'm sold. I'm not the kind of person who has a TV schedule and I have to leave work before a certain time to catch a soapie. 

If I don't watch TV for a month it doesn't make a difference to my life. But I have to admit, there is an addictive quality to TV. You know days when you don't want to think and you turn on E! Entertainment and you watch their reality TV shows for hours and you will your brain not to think. 

I think E! fans are sick of hearing about Lindsey Lohans's out of control life. If they aren't then they should be. 

I am not a fan of reality TV. I miss TV days when comedy was comedy, and you'd have drama's, and crime series', documentaries. Everything was neatly labelled and you knew you were getting escapism. 

Now it seems if I want to get lost for a minute the only place to do it is on a reality TV show. And yeah, I'm one of those viewers who is like, "are these people for real?"

Am I the only person who misses the days when a singer or a band would be on radio and you would know nothing about their personal lives. You'd have a secret crush on some guy with five kids and you wouldn't care because you wouldn't know. 

And don't you miss the days when you'd be crazy about a lead in a series and you'd call him by his stage name and he'd be real to you. And you'd know so little of the actors real life.

Are our lives so starved of any kind of excitement that we need to live vicariously through celebrities? Why should I feel dragged into Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt's divorce? Why should I dislike Angelina Jolie when I don't even know her?

Why is Lindsey Lohan going to jail mean something to me? Can't she be a messed up kid who got caught up with the wrong crowd and made some bad decisions? Why oh why, someone please tell me, is she all over my TV?

I guess what I'm ranting about is that I want to watch fictitious people living fictitious lives. I want to discuss the characters with my friends as if they are real people the next day and forget about them until the next episode. 

I want to think of Beyonce as a singer and not as Jay-Z's wife and Rihanna as the girl who can't sing and not the girl who got slapped around by her boyfriend, Chris Brown.

I don't want to know the nitty gritties of people's break-ups and I sure as hell don't need to see them on my TV! 

The Power of No

Women are natural lovers. They give without being asked, soothe when things aren't right and often afraid to displease. They need to touch and be touched. They want to matter. 

This need to please that women have often leaves many women incapable of refusing themselves and others. 

It is almost as if saying "no" makes us feel a little less capable. Just when I thought that the peer pressure stage was over, I was proven wrong. I often watch older women around me getting into more debt not because they are spending money on stuff they want but because of pressure from their children, husbands or boyfriends or neighbours. 

We've been led to believe for centuries that we have to be dominated by men and never to ask questions. Women often think that doing stuff that they necessarily don't want to do just because the next person expects it will make them more acceptable. 

Girls learn from their watching their mothers bend to pressure. I've seen instances where women I work with say that they will not buy X and then a bunch of people around them buy that exact thing that they don't want to buy and for some reason they end up buying it and justifying why they bought it. A week later these very same women then regret this decision. 

If you don't want to do something say no, no one is going to kill you. Sure, they'll call you difficult but who the hell cares? You don't want to be tossing and turning for weeks because you did something that you know is wrong for you.

The incapability of saying no is you telling everyone around you that you believe yourself powerless, worthless and most of all that you don't matter. 

It's okay to do stuff because you want to, or to give because you want to, or to buy because you want to. But don't do stuff because you are pushed into a corner by a bully. Ask if you want clarity, hell ask a million questions if you have to and if the answers you get after all that still don't satisfy you...

Stick to your "no" it is your right.

When Will It End...

This is prickly subject in South Africa and I suspect, everywhere in the world where there are women that work.

South Africans have found a way of dealing with it and it’s called women’s month. It is not something you can discuss before or after the month of August. It’s uncomfortable and both men and women shy away from it. And yet any female who has a job outside her home will either encounter sexual harassment in the future, is encountering it or has encountered it.

I’m not talking about consensual adult relationships where both parties are comfortable with their relationship. This is about that dark area where one party is bombarded with sexual commentary and propositions and doesn’t particularly like it. This is a subject that bothers me, and it pains me that so many young women are still forced to enter the workplace where they are protected by laws of this country which are almost impossible to enforce. 

One girlfriend of mine is constantly bombarded with proposals from her married overweight boss. He occasionally has the nerve to walk into her office and tell her that she looks like she hasn’t gotten laid in a while. The sad thing is, in a male dominated industry that my friend works in the only person she can report this vile man to is most probably another man. Worse still, I suspect if there was a woman around who she could tell the woman would tell her that she needs to suck it up.

Another friend of mine sent me a text message. She’s recently started a new job, which is great. But she had barely gotten comfortable when some man came up to her and said: “your lips are nice and juicy so I assume that you won’t be a disappointment down there.” Of course I do not need to expand on where down there is.

And of course, I need to draw from my own experience as well. I had been working for a year, and this guy I worked with was using the copy machine behind me and as I was busy with stuff on my desk he grabbed by booty.

It was a shocking moment and I decided to tell someone about it and they asked, “and you did nothing?” I found this a little strange, and I kept on thinking: could I have stopped it?  prevented it from happening? I think this is where men are slightly dim and what they don’t get about sexual harassment.  If a man makes an inappropriate comment or touches you inappropriately, unless you have a recording to prove this and also prove that you were not a willing recipient, you are basically powerless. More women have left their dream jobs to escape the embarrassment of being scorned by all and sundry while the men who harassed them have been patted on the back in sympathy and masculine solidarity   have kept their cushy jobs and have most probably gone on to repeat these transgressions on each new piece of “meat” in the company.

Men make sexual innuendos woman are so eager to fit in as one of the boys, to prove your mettle lest you be deemed to be too sensitive for the job, ignore the comments or laugh them off.

This is a battle women will never win for the following reasons:

There are still women in the workplace who place a higher value to their sex appeal than they do to being competent. As long as if it’s okay with you that all the men in the office call women “sexy Thandi” and those women basking in it. While in the same work place you have a Grace, who has a nice booty and is uncomfortable with men calling her, “Bootilicious Grace”. The principle is while a guy might preen at having the size of their packages attached to their names not all women want this sort of notoriety.

As long as we women still say to the next woman, “I survived it so can you” it will still go on. If your bonus is attached to you having to grin and bear it while your boss feels you up and your senior female colleague telling you, “he also did it to me”, as if it’s a tiny price to pay, who are you going to call?

Women need to start telling guys they work with, no matter how stuck up it’ll make you look, that the joke is totally inappropriate. They’ll scorn you and call you a cold bitch, but that is better than them thinking you are fair game.

It is still a mans world. Guys will stick together. Your closest male colleague will say: “I know he was out of line, but he is still the best negotiator on the team.” Or you’ll be reminded that you once said that the guy who is harassing you is attractive or that “he meant it as a joke.”

And as long as male managers still risk having female subordinates throwing themselves at them and crying sexual harassment when the affair gets sour, and organisations are forced to spend millions investigating how the affair started in the first place only for it to emerge that the women had told half her colleagues how “happy she is in the relationship”  it is never going to end.

Women don’t set boundaries when it starts. Men always test the water. When we are new and desperate to fit in we laugh along to the bawdy jokes, and later when it turns against us we want to stop it.

You are not obligated to meet your boss in a lobby of a hotel for a drink after work if you are not comfortable. Tell your boss “I’m not comfortable, we can work late in the office, but not out of it.” Your contract says your report to this person, but it doesn’t say that you’ll be working at midnight in his home or that you need to climb into his car after work and go to a hotel.

If it gets bad, call your mother or your girlfriend and talk it out. Tell a female colleague. Document the incidents word for word (include your responses). Action by action. Don’t take the “hey, you sexy thing” comments lightly in the beginning. Keep the text messages. Get your call register and highlight each time this man has phoned you after work hours to ask you out or hit on you.

Keep the evidence until you feel it has become unbearable or you leave the company. Even if it looks like it has stopped, hold on to it. Remember, the higher you go in a company the bigger your responsibility is to the young women who will work with you. You need to listen to them and be a shoulder for them to cry on. Advice them, but don’t enforce your opinion and lifestyle choices on them. After all, some girls go into these relationships willingly. 

Wanted: Change!

Change is the only constant. Tomorrow is not promised and blah blah blah. We’ve heard it all before and yet we are never prepared. My mother made me read: who moved my cheese. Basically the moral of the story is that we must plan for change and never be content with the status quo.

Obviously whoever who wrote the book doesn’t work where I do. Sometimes, I realised this week, we must simply accept what we do not like and move along. Life is what it is and people are so content with going on the way they have for the past ten decades and it is not my place to change it.

Often where we are at is just a pit stop in our journey and not our destination. When I feel beaten down at work, I go back to my office and I think about how my life sucks. I go home and I absorb it and I think, “how can I make it better.”

This is not my illness to heal. Period. I found it maimed and hell, I’ll most probably leave it gasping for breath. All I have to do is to think what is it that I am meant to learn from this and hope whatever it is it'll be useful later on in my life. And yes, sometimes there is no lesson in hardship. You just get stronger, learn to fight harder and hopefully make it out in one piece.

Sometimes you see the seeds of the illness infiltrate your life. For example: you know you can write the report in half an hour but you procrastinate and it eventually takes you an entire month to produce it.

So this week, I’ve resolved to cut out these little headaches from my life. If something serves no purpose, I will ruthlessly cut it out. Go back to being the me I know before I catch the virus called mediocrity. Trust me, it’s contagious.

I have to realise that my life, while inconsequent, is bigger than this place. I’m here to learn what I need to in order to fulfil my destiny. A former colleague once told me before he resigned that some wars are just not worth fighting. He found this place here, and he’ll leave it here. The truth is, my organisation with thrive without me. I can die and I will be replaced with a click of a finger. Hell, they won’t even miss me.

There are things I want to achieve in my life and I’m taking it step by step. Sure, while this place depresses me at times I do love certain aspects of my job. I hate that the people I work with are at times unhelpful and critical about things that they themselves cannot do. But I love my boss and doing what I can to contribute in my small way to making this place a better place than I found it.

I have a plan for my future and failure is not an option. This dig is not all bad but it is not perfect either but it is my dig for now. And while I hate things not bending to my will all the time I’ll live and yes, I am grateful that I get paid enough to afford a decent pair of shoes once in a while…

For My Love of Reading

I have this great love of reading. Books have been a part of my life ever since I can remember. Being born in the “old South Africa” as a black person makes me somewhat of an oddity.  Reading isn’t something that black people did for enjoyment, it was something that was done to get an education to better yourself.

Our grandparents didn’t have bookshelves lining their walls, and countless of books that they would read on a lazy Sunday afternoon while listening to the radio. I remember my mother telling me that if you were found reading on a Saturday afternoon it would be assumed that you were studying for a test.

As much as it pains me, sixteen years into the “rainbow nation” this hasn’t changed. A couple of my friends and I have had this conversation a lot of times. We’ve most probably discussed it to death and it still irks me that such a small number of black South Africans give themselves time just to read for the sheer pleasure of it.

My love of books has taken me on a journey. I can’t count how many books my mother bought me when I was a child, and the countless trips to the library on weekends. This was my childhood. I’ve never known a time in my house where there wasn’t a new book.

I suppose I need to thank my parents for their love of reading that they’ve passed on to my siblings and I. It’s something I’ve taken for granted so often and yet it such a huge part of who I am. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I was told that I wasn’t allowed to read, for whatever reason.

And somehow, freedom translates into so many things to so many people. To me freedom is having the right to read what I want. That is my human right.

Books are my companions, and the best, I must say. They don’t judge you and they give so much without asking for anything from me.

Earlier in the year, I was in Franschoek browsing through their second-hand bookshops. And right over there was this book that was part of a series of books I loved as child. “The Secret Book of Gnomes”.

In that moment, I had to acknowledge that my love of reading was helped along by my parents and their persistent book buying. I maybe wouldn’t love books the way I do if my mother didn’t insist on buying us books for Christmas instead of toys.

I can remember significant moments in my life by what book I read during that period. When my maternal grandmother  passed I was reading a book about three children living in Warsaw who lost their home and had to travel through the second world war and ended up starting over in Switzerland. I remember the December my grandmother passed my mother making my cousin and I read I am David.

I also remember when my paternal grandmother passed, a couple of weeks after that I remember feeling depressed (I was fifteen) and going through the bookshelves in our sitting room and pulling out this red book titled the power of one. The feeling of reading that book about Peekay and his journey moved me to tears.

What I also remember about my parents was that if they wanted to reach you and they didn’t know how to they would buy a book that would have that message.

I ask you, after all these years and all my parents have been to me and are to me, how can I not love reading. How can I not want to inspire the same feelings in others when they read a book I’ve written?

Bottoms Up To Being Au Natural!

I decided to take off my weave this week. Which means going to the salon, getting my hair pulled, the knots in my afro combed out and voila! Au natural me! For a couple of months at least.

While sitting at the Salon doing the girly-girl thing, I realised that there is something about women and doing their hair and nails that is almost magical. Finding a hairdresser is a nightmare. It’s almost like relationships, sometimes you have to go through a million bad relationships to find a good one. And well...my hairstylists might not be ideal but they sort of work with what I’ve got, and that’s all I need. Maybe next time I decide to start dating I should look for a guy who works with what I’ve got. Don’t ask what I mean, I don’t know!

Anyhow, the fake hair is gone and I look a couple of years younger than normal. Which means that if I normally look like I’m twenty-two I now look like I’m twenty. My eyes look huge and my cheeks chubbier! Cute? Really? And then I realised, people actually think I am as plastic on the inside as I look on the outside. I wonder if the weaveless me will inspire people to see a deeper more intense Simamile. Hell, I could conduct a study!

Talking about au natural...shaving your armpits is strongly advised. Seriously! I know it’s winter and it’s cold, but ladies...imagine if you have to take off your tops for whatever reason and you are hairy all over. Hmmm...okay, I promise that I’ll shave today. Promise!

Someone thought to get me a make-up bag as thank you gift. A shiny, gold make-up bag. They see me everyday and I don’t wear make-up (I’m not as plastic as I look). I now have a shiny (I don’t like shiny things either) make-up bag. I of course said thank you, my mamma raised me right. But seriously, all I kept thinking when I saw this bag was, “is this chick for real?” Advice to anyone who cares: the gift should match the personality, and the personality the gift. In other words, if you don’t know what I’ll like, a gift voucher is a great idea. In fact, gift vouchers were invented for people like me! 

From the au-natural Hippie in Stilettos, there are a few things that are unforgivable. You can have bad hair days, buy rubbish gifts, don’t shave your armpits... but please whatever you do take a shower/bath daily and please, oh please, use deodorant, no one should be allowed in public without applying deodorant before leaving their home!

A Review: Daughters of Fortune by Tara Hyland

I’ve just finished reading Tara Hyland’s debut novel Daughters of Fortune. I love first time writers. Unlike most readers I am attracted to debut writers. I want to give them a chance and even though I am sometimes disappointed, these chancers inspire me.

Especially those of Tara Hyland’s calibre. The book doesn’t try to sell itself as anything other than what it is. It is chick-lit. The bonkbuster. A new genre in literature that takes advantage of our society’s obsession with wealth, conspicuous spending and celebrity. It is what young women want to read on weekends at home and lazy days on the beach.  She doesn’t try to over-intellectualise the book with a sad ending. She doesn’t try to tell the reader what to think at any point. It’s a book and it was absolutely fun to read.

Her book is well written, it flows and before you know it its two in the morning and you are still gripped! I loved her characters and their relationship dynamics. I loved that she had a happy ending. I loved how she included date rape in her story, it is a reality of our society. I loved the fact that Amber was a chronic attention seeker. I loved that Elizabeth was a strong minded career woman who suffered through the balance of family and ambition like many young women today. I loved that Caitlin had a truckload of trust and commitment issues.

My one major criticism of the book is that she could have done away with some of the back story. William’s yearning to be a bigger part of Caitlin’s life could have been motivated by guilt over rejecting her mother rather than his love for her. It was a bit Cinderella-esque but hell, isn’t that the whole reason why we keep buying bonkbusters? 

Tara Hyland seems to understand what her reader expects when they buy a book titled Daughters of Fortune. The book sold itself for what it was, and unlike many debut authors it exceeded my expectations. Will I be looking for Tara Hyland’s next book at my bookstore? Hell yeah! 

What Men Should Never Do When Hitting on Females

As it is a Thursday and a lot of hot sisters will be painting the town red in their tiny little outfits I feel compelled to help them out because I know there will be a man waiting to ruin it for them.

I know men have heard this all before, yet after a couple of drinks or maybe feeling out of their depth it flies out of the window. So for men who are really that ignorant I've compiled a list of five things men should never do when hitting on women whom they have never met.

1. Never lick your lips, LL Cool J Style, at a woman you've never met. Hell, even if you've met it's still a turn-off. Women do not think lip-licking men are sexy, and no matter how crazy they might be about LL Cool J, it does not leave them hot and bothered...in fact it is down right disgusting!
2. Never make a blatantly sexually charged comment to a woman you've just met. Man says, "Hi, you look delicious." Man proceeds to lick lips. This does not make a woman feel flattered or sexy. In fact it makes women feel like their personal space has been invaded without their permission. 
3. A man flagging a woman down in traffic and hoping she will pull over just to meet you is a bit egotistical, no matter how hot your car is. What, do men think that we women fantasize about meeting a total stranger in traffic and telling all our girls about it? Get over your car, no self-respecting woman likes being flagged down.
4. When a group of men approach a table of women and ask the women in they can join them and the women say no. Please men, do not take it upon yourselves to then buy the table drinks. The women, believe it or not, are just not interested. 
5. If a woman has been giving you one-word responses for ten minutes and she's refused to give you her name. If she cringes each time your creepy hand snakes out to touch her shoulder and if she is trying hard to look like you are not talking to her, then why man, oh why ask her for her number?

I don't promise that if you stop doing one or all of the above you will get laid. But I do guarantee you that you'll look less like a psycho and seem less like a pest. She will not have to blacklist you to all her girls, who could be hotter than she is.

And just to sign off, men who cannot stand up straight after a couple of drinks and who cannot keep their hands to themselves should not go where there is booze and women in the same space. Men, retrain your boys and save us the drama!