Sex talk: Be a man, first

My latest column gets inspiration from the most unlikely of places: Big Brother Africa, The Chase.

Since Uganda crashed out of the game in the first two weeks, I cannot say I have really been an avid follower of the reality TV show, although I read up on it online and watch the Sunday eviction telecast.

It seems most viewers hated Oneal, the Tswana professional club DJ, who got evicted last Sunday.

He was accused of being too boisterous and blunt, in addition to refusing to suck up to anybody. And yet in the house, Tanzania’s strikingly beautiful, talented and strong woman Feza, seemed to be putty when it came to Oneal’s hands.

The two say they are in love and are talking marriage outside the Big Brother house, something the show’s millions of viewers seem not to fathom. What does she see in him? He is such a bully! Blah blah blah, the forum comments go on.

These are clearly Africans who have read their fair share of Mills & Boon romances and watched too many series. I seem to understand perfectly what this Tanzanian songstress sees in Oneal, however: strength of character. A take-charge man.

That kind of man is The Man (not Ken Lukyamuzi!) and going by the stories I hear today, he is in danger of extinction. Give him a few more years and we could be talking about him along with the dinosaurs...

I will speak for myself and for every honest-to-the-bone woman out there: a man not intimidated by a woman’s own strength is quite the turn-on. If you watch Big Brother, Feza is the very opinionated woman in that house when she is with the rest of the housemates – almost a bully herself sometimes.

That is until Oneal walks into the room, and she transforms into a puree of sorts, all submissive and besotted, something that has irked the show’s mostly young viewership across Africa. They seem to relate more to the cigarette-smoking, wild, and untameable Nigerian model Beverley’s relationship with the dreadlocked South African, Angelo. I actually call him Rapunzel; his dreadlocks are straining to touch his knees!

Angelo and Beverley’s sex-charged, hakuna matata affair is the ideal in most young people’s minds, but in the real world, a strong woman needs a man who complements her character by challenging that strength.

Yes, a man who occasionally cries when he is mourning or moved by emotions can be sexy because he is in touch with his feminine side, but one who cries at the drop of the hat? Please!

Any woman with strength of character will tell you, a take-charge man who is not afraid to tell her where exactly she should get off, is more desirable than one who submits under her immense strength and would happily switch his pants for her skirts any time.

Just read the newspapers’ ‘lonely hearts’ sections; wimps of men looking for powerful, rich women to literally give them piggy rides, I guess. Where is the sexy in that? Women domineering roles are very sexy as role-playing gimmicks during foreplay; outside that, every woman wants her man to simply ‘man up’. It does not make her weak; just feminine.

And you still wonder why the marriage institution is in so much trouble? Husbands are busy running off, upset, to the bedroom because “madam is so mean!” as their wives prop their feet on the ottomans and wait in veiled disgust for their all-cried-out husbands.

And don’t twist my column today to mean advocacy for wife-battering or even disrespect for your wife; just learn to be the man in your home in every way; the bedroom results will have no choice but to follow.

Truth is, in some marriages, wives feel like they married a fellow woman with the rate at which hubby never, ever stands up for himself or for his family, on top of screaming at the top of his voice for wifey to come and kill everything from cockroaches to snakes that may trespass in the home.

And then she pays the bills. And pays the school fees. And stocks the pantry... By the time she joins him in bed for some hot loving, chances are she does not get the “fuss” one bit.

Man up, the rest will take care of itself.