How Not to Underestimate a Girl

The Mighty Miss Malone; Credit: barnesandnoble.com

(By Nkechi Bianze) - 

Part 1:
Between 1996-1997, I was in Primary 4.
I did my first term primary 4 in a school at Isolo, Lagos.

I remember getting there to notice that all the three top positions in class had been colonized by three boys, who held on to them like those positions were their birthrights.

There was also another new student in class.

There were some common factors between me and this other new student.
1. We were both girls.
2. We were both from outside Lagos. While I came from Delta State, she came from Anambra State.

I don’t know whether Lagos residents still live in this sort of delusion. But in those days, many Lagos residents actually had the complex that Lagos was the London of Nigeria. Many of them believed that everyone who lives outside Lagos lives in a village, and is not as civilized as them Lagos residents. And even those who lived in Lagos ghettos, swamps and gutter houses also lived in same delusion. 😏

We were looked down on as village girls. Me, I didn’t mind. I saw them all as ignorant people who were going to meet the rudest shocks of their lives at the end of the term. I actually pitied them in advance.🤣🤣🤣
Yes, as a young child, I was extra confident. My Dad started speaking life into me from a very young age. I couldn’t wait for the end of the term to come so that I will show them what village girls were capable of. The report card/end of term result was going to show who the boss really was; Lagos boys or village girls.

The other girl felt intimidated by the “village girl” tag, so I made her my friend. She was also extra smart.

The first blow came to them when the class teacher set a maths test to determine who was going to be the class prefect. I got the highest score, one of the boys got the second highest, and my fellow village girl got the third highest score.

But the silly class teacher said the boy was going to be prefect, because he was a boy, and that I was going to be assisted (By-the-way; this was the first time I experienced sexism). I rejected, so the other village girl became the assistant.

To cut the long story short, end of term came, and I came first. My fellow village girl came second, while the Lagos boys came third, fourth and fifth positions.

And this my dear friends, made news in the school.

As young as I was then, I found it rather appalling that people looked down on my cognitive and intellectual ability because I didn’t grow up in Lagos. That sort of stereotype is the most stupid stereotype I’ve come across.

I don’t even know how such stereotype came to place. Lagos State is NOT known to produce the best students in the country, so how did they come up with such stereotype?

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Part 2:

The guy who came third had been taking first since primary 1, so it was slight to be pushed to not second position, but third.

His Dad beat the living day light out of him.

Why?

NOT because he took third, but because he allowed girls to beat him.
According to this ignorant father of this poor child, he wouldn’t have beaten him if it were boys who beat him out of first position.

And this leads me to the point I want to make.

It’s bad enough for a parent to beat his child for not taking first position. But when you push it a notch higher by inflicting pains on him because he was beaten by a girl or girls, you inflict sexism into him.

This is how you breed boys who grow up as men who can’t withstand defeat from their female counterparts.
This is how you breed boys who think girls should always be below them.
This is how you breed boys who can’t marry more intelligent women than they are, and who feel very inferior and egoless with more intelligent women.
This is how you breed boys who can’t marry women who are more successful than they are. And you begin to tell women to suffer for your wrong parenting by asking them to reduce themselves.

Why?

You are indirectly telling your son that mediocrity is ok, as long as there’s no female superior. More like my son, you can be second best, as long as the best is not female.

You have told them that It’s an abnormally to have a female surpass them in anything.

But you are living an illusion, and you are moulding your son to live an illusion too. Because when he goes out into the real world, at every point of his live, he is always going to find women who surpass him in different areas of his life.

What is the right thing to do when your child (boy or girl) drops from first to third position? Ask him or her to fight back his or her way to the top. The gender of the person ahead of them is irrelevant.

I didn’t go back to that school, because my parents were done with Lagos, and moved us back. But as young as I was in 1996, I had sworn that I would rather die than let anyone take that first position from me.

Why did I fight so hard?

I was looked down on, and I was desperate to prove a point. They had the guts to call me a village girl who could never top the class. I was determined to reset their brains and use my grades to prove that not being born and raised in Lagos doesn’t take away the fact that I was capable of being the “boss lady” in class.

“Boss lady” in this case means the best student, and a female.

Maybe the guy took back his first position, I don’t know. But just like I still remember, I don think he will ever forget the lesson that experience taught him.

- Nkechi Bianze