N&I JOURNALS:Swirly whirly girly-boys; Are they proud of it?

During a lesson and this guy comes in (he always comes late) cat walking like Grace Bahati or Cynthia Akazuba. Heads turn in his direction, eyes following him to his seat and when he sits down, everyone bursts out laughing. Some are happy they have just been treated to a thirty seconds catwalk, some are excited they still have a month of seeing this great spectacle before a teacher starts making noise… (I mean teaching) while some are thanking God for giving them the chance of seeing this species of human being! And others are irritated of course. A story (“I feel fly to be a tomboy”) appeared in the September 5, 2009 TEENZ issue justifying tomboy-ism. Ok yeah, Edith Namuganga, the writer, feels fly to be a tomboy but how about that guy who behaves like a chic? They call him a ‘girly-boy’. Does he also feel proud to be one? And what happens if tomboy meets and dates girly-boy? Sam, a girly-boy, swears he did not see it coming. He did not know Hilda was a tomboy or else he would not have dated her because of her behavior which he could not handle. “Yes she was beautiful,” he says, “but everything about our relationship was weird. When I smiled, she starred at me blank-faced and emotionless. I was the one who blushed.” “I was completely confused because I did not know what to do yet I loved her so much,” said Sam. Sam says she made the decisions and he followed. Everything about her was what he was supposed to be. When they went out, people laughed at them. Sam was the chic and Hilda was the guy. “Even the waiters took our orders while laughing.”Ego is one of the few male qualities he had and he says he had to save it because it seemed like Hilda also had this quality! “I told Hilda it was over! I could not handle all the pressure and what people used to think of us,” says Sam. Tomboy is what girly-boy is supposed to be and vice versa, but does girly-boy feel proud about it or should we blame someone else? “Just because I like poetry, reading novels and listening to soft music, which these guys call ‘gay’, I am criminalized with the sissy title. Those are the only supposedly female characters I have got. So I don’t think they justify anyone calling me sissy,” Sam complains. Some girly-boys say they grew up in homes and neighborhoods with a high female demography. Some say they have single mothers; others claim their fathers were too distant (read busy) and had no time for them. The bold ones say they admired female characteristics. “My sisters were so good to me, not like my brothers who only bullied me,” says Jonathan a Swilrly Boy! But how does society view them? This is the question tonight! Eddie, a S.6 student in one of the boys schools in Kigali says, “these guys narrowly missed out on being chicks but they shouldn’t be considered as chicks. They are male.Amanda thinks, “Sometimes they are so sweet, especially when you are down. They are as emotional as we (girls) are but that’s the problem.” “They can’t have that presence that defines and differentiates a real guy from a girl. And they also want us to treat them the way their sisters do. At least they should make an effort to change their expectations,” she advises. But even with these deliberations, the swirly girly boy will retain his catwalk, politeness and will still be looked at as a softie because, as Eddie says, “he missed out on the chance of being a boy.” So guys, I think these people deserve the treatment we would want because they did not choose who they are! Do not look at them as “pedde”! However, this does not apply for the guys who put on makeup like chicks! They smear lip stick on their lips and make think they are girls! No!!! Innocent250@gmail.com