"Are Women Only Confident When Naked?"

I thought I’d start this article with a witty first liner comparable with that of Carrie Bradshaw but unfortunately that’s not going to happen. I’m sitting in a coffee shop, pondering over a discussion I had with my fairly misogynistic male friend. He remarked that I could not be as confident when relating to men, as men could be with women. I’m not talking about the ole’ double standard of men being able to sleep with lots of women and being praised and women doing the same and being called ‘sluts’ (we know, Lilly Allen, Eve etc have taught us that already). I’m talking about the idea that women who are confident are seen as intimidating, ‘man eaters’ and sometimes as lesbians, because they play hard ball. Pardon the pun. However when men are trail blazers, cocky and full of bravado-they’re simply manly, a man’s man. Since when did confidence become a male only attribute?

What started to appear in my mind after this argument was the amount of times I’d heard women justify and lift themselves up. “I’m a confident woman” I’ve heard countless times. There’s nothing wrong with saying that, but what’s scary is the fact that I’ve never heard a man say “I’m a confident man,” have you? And I wonder why that is? Do we women proclaim we’re confident women as a way of reclaiming the self-esteem that’s been taken from us through years of misogyny? Is it a small way of saying ‘I can.’ Whatever the reason is, it seems pointless somehow in a world where career women, female politicians, celebrities etc are still viewed as power hungry, with whispers of ‘she’s a bit bossy’, ‘she’s intimidating’, if we demand what we want without apologising for it.

Thing is, the few times men seem to respond to powerful women in the media, women like Marilyn Monroe, Beyoncé, Rihanna and the likes-these women seem to appeal very much to the one thing men all want.

S E X

Nicki Minaj is one female music artist who, looking past some questionable lyrics and videos-gives a very strong and confident pro-female message. And after declaring 2010 that she wasn't going to follow in the steps of her predecessors Foxy Brown and Lil Kim and that ‘she intended to subdue her sexuality because’, as she said in Vibe Magazine in 2010 she “(wants) people-especially young girls-to know that in life, nothing is going to be based on sex appeal. You've got to have something else to go with that.” And yet, the video to her recent single ‘Anaconda’ contains purely sexual lyrics, with female strippers in the music video and Minaj herself opening her limbs and twerking throughout. It would be naïve of us to think that she’s simply had a change of heart. Why, when ‘Anaconda’ was delayed to be released, to announce the bad news, she posted a picture of herself in arse baring clothing with her legs yet again wide open on her Instagram profile.

All this makes me wonder, how confident women can be when we keep our clothes on. For when we take them off, like Miley or Nicki or RiRi, we’re greeted with excessive attention from males and revered as ‘top b*tches’. However, in day to day life, in the board room, in the work place and home-if a woman is confident, she is likely to be held to be domineering and over bearing. That leads us to ask the question, are women only allowed to be confident when they are sex symbols? Or is the more important question, are men intimidated by women when they refuse to be sex symbols?

Sincerely Oghosa x