On Monday, journalist, Daily Nation columnist and blogger, Njoki Chege, stirred up a hornet’s nest with her blog post that directly hit out at ladies for being the reason why their men cheat, one of which was being fat.
Well, as expected, the article achieved super virality on social media and it was only long before a ‘befitting’ response was coming.
Here’s that response by Wanjiku Wanderi;
An open letter to the ignorant self-described ‘city girl’
Dear Njoki Chege,
First off, I am not your Fan. I am just another internet savvy user who has the absolute displeasure of stumbling upon articles you have written, quickly skimming through them and moving on to more entertaining, informative and educative feature pieces. However, it cannot escape me that you are now writing for one of Kenya National Newspapers. Good for you. That is a quiet a fete. What perturbs me though is the fact that you have taken your own issues and misplaced (negative) outlook of life, and are now using the right channels to drum the wrong gospel to a very impressionable audience. Someone has impressed these notions on you and you’ve now taken it upon yourself to judge and condemn people, and journeys that you know nothing about. How naïve! Yours is a pavement and biased judgment. I see you as a bully with no empathy or compassion for putting other’s down. It is all about the stats and maybe the paycheck for you, at whatever cost. I get you. It is a jungle out here. You have put your opinions of marriage, women, cheating spouses, SAHM out there for us to read, ponder and react. I respect that. So sit tight as I a mother, wife, journalist and feminist rubbish your words and perhaps teach you one or two lessons on marriage, respect, common courtesy and growing up.
You see it is very easy to laugh, condemn and be utterly sarcastic to others when you have little basis of what their life story is all about. It is easy to sit behind a computer and punch in words of a life that you have not lived either based on experiences you have overheard in a bar or whatever social circles you roam. It takes a conscious mind to do some meaningful research and turn them into a well-meaning article that will be read by people from all walks of life. You are young, unmarried and ‘free’. You are the Zebra teaching the Lion how to hunt. Your words are shaped by your own worldview and experiences. The undertones of your rhetoric come across as bitter, subjective, delusion and so out-of-touch that one can only mutter to themselves, ‘oh the folly of the sassy, sarcastic, insulting young city woman whose journey has just begun!” Such irony.
City Girl
I don’t know much about the upbringing of a city girl seeing that I grew up in the countryside. From your articles, though, this city girl sounds like all talk no action. She is speaking on behalf of the philandering man and justifying his wayward life. Back in the village, men in bars used to talk about the latest ‘kahawa or chai bonuses’, their wives, acquired land and mostly local politics, down to the local chief issues. Interestingly, the city men look like they sit in bars and open up to the ‘independent’ lady sipping on her expensive cocktail bought with her own hard-earned money, about their marital problems.
Talk of a writer’s goldmine. From here you gather your data and use it to point fingers at women and blame them for their husband’s clandestine affairs. Men must love you – to them you are better than a priest or their male friends. You understand their problems; one because you are a single woman, and you are also in a position to write and give their wives a solution to the unspoken marital woes. You must be the most sought after male companion. I picture all these men hovering around you, pouring out their marriage problems, describing in detail why they slept with the secretary or the ‘pretty young thing’, and you the ever listening journalist nodding your head in empathy as you take mental and actual notes. At the end you promise them a solution. A way out. You are going to write their story and reach out to wives with the sole message that they are to blame if the man cheats.
The men retreat to their seats, order another drink for themselves and an expensive cocktail for you (which you decline because you don’t mix work with pleasure…and of course you are an independent woman), they thank you heartily and express their full support for your endeavors. They are absolved off their sins and you have bagged your next story. Perfect win!
You call women fat
Now that is just rude. Someone didn’t teach you manners. There is a difference between being forward and being curt. Rude people are more disliked than ‘fat’ ones. These plus-size ladies have their own stories to tell, which if you did some research, you would discover that theirs is either genetic or a constant weigh loss challenge. However, you are a lazy writer only keen to tell one side of the story. And bullies like to call others fat to validate their own body image issues. Bullies also like to get attention and they will use whatever means and ways necessary to pass their message across. Sadly, you are using the national newspaper to serve this purpose.
Whatever issues you have with plus-size ladies does not give you any right to pen it down and blame them for their men’s philandering ways. A cheating man will dip his penis in anything outside his marriage, whether he is married to Miss Universe or the local ‘Mama Mboga’. A Faithful man on the other hand, will stand by his wife through ‘thick and thin’ because he knows her journey and he appreciates that the body you called ‘ugly, unsightly and unheavenly’ is the one that carried and nurtured his children. He will lift those ‘flabs and folds’ and love her like no other man can. And yes, such men do exist, but you won’t find them at your local bar.
See Njoki, I was once very petite with what I called perfectly placed breasts. Then I got pregnant, had hyperemesis gravidarum (a pregnancy condition that Kate Middleton had too), lost 25 per cent of my body weight. After baby came. I ate, to sustain myself and my ever hungry son. I followed my doctor’s advice on not too worry so much about the kilos packing up, and I was ok with that as long as my child was healthy and fed. I drunk up the fermented uji that my mother served. Actually, I had a 1.5 liter thermos next to my bed for midnight snacking, because in our culture such feeding from those looking after a new mother is an expression of love. And boy, did I gladly accept that unconditional love. Naturally the kilos went up. My baby belly took its time to return to the pre-baby shape, my breasts drooped. I acquired stretchmarks from the expanded and retracted belly, which your ignorant-self describes as marks resulting from eating like a ‘pig’. This was, and still is, my 4th trimester body. It is a testament to a journey that I have a taken. The priceless journey to motherhood.
But you know what, your loathing words only reflect the kind of person you are inside. These women you call fat have come to love their bodies. I see some of them every day working so damn hard to lose weight so that they can fit a certain social perception of what is beautiful. The kind that you negate as fat and ugly. I am proud of the mother’s out there who look themselves in the mirror see past their sizes and bring out what you scoff off as ‘inner beauty’. These women have learned that character is more endearing than their dress size. They do not have to allow discriminating and excluding people like you to stand between them and their happiness.
Njoki, I assume that you are yet to have children, if you ever want them, but here is something you and women and men of your kind should know. Do not laugh at and mock fellow women unless you have an idea of what their life story is about. Do not go about assuming that your shallow worldview fits into everyone‘s outlook of life. Do not throw rocks when you live in a glass house. Everybody is entitled to self-respect.
Read the rest of the letter HERE.
For those who didn’t watch this episode that had Mc Jesse trending on Twitter, fret not we got you covered.
