A while back, I wrote a post about how there were no hard and fast rules for dealing with body insecurities. And the truth is there aren’t and we all just sort of develop our own peculiar coping mechanisms that help us live with them, and if we get lucky even get over them. I talked to a couple of women about what body parts they were insecure about, their coping mechanisms for dealing with them and how well they had worked for them, and the answers were inspiring. We are going to profile one a week, over the next couple of weeks, and for this week we have Adunni.
Adunni, 26
I used to be very insecure about my ears. They are rather large I must admit, and for a very long time I obsessed over them. I got teased all through primary and secondary school, and you know children can be rather creative when coming up with mean nicknames. I was called everything from Dumbo to Mr. Spock. I eventually learned the best ways to hide my ears and I always did that until I met my husband. One day we were at the salon together and he asked me to do a ponytail because he felt it’ll look good on me. I protested vehemently and he countered every single one of my excuses. Eventually he wore me down and I resigned myself to taking out the hair the next day. But he didn’t let me, he took tons of photographs and kept on telling me how beautiful I was, he put them up on his facebook, and I was forced to see these pictures always popping up once I went through my facebook. I went through the comments one day, and they was some teasing about him being a soft guy, some about how pretty I was and how lucky he was to have me, and none about my ears. I went to work the next day without a scarf, for the first time since I had gotten the hair done, and the only comments I got were about how the hairstyle brought out my face. When a colleague confronted me about why I had never done such hairstyles before, I confided in her about how I didn’t like the size of my ears. She responded with “Se gbogbo e niyen? O serious” (is that all? you are not serious) and walked a way.
These days most of my hairstyles are in updos and even though I still get some ribbing about my ears, I’ve discovered that I’ve stopped caring and even laugh when I get called Dumbo now. So I guess I could say I got loved out of my insecurities. My husband still keeps a framed copy of one of the pictures he took, the first time I showed off my ears, and he keeps it on our bedside table. He says he keeps it there so he can wake up to my face when I’m not around, but I know he keeps it there for me, as a constant reminder to love myself completely.