Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

  Never, ever link Chizalum’s appearance with morality. Never tell her that a short skirt is “immoral.” Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality. If you clash over what she wants to wear, never say things like “You look like a prostitute,” as I know your mother once told you. Instead, say, “That dress doesn’t flatter you like this other one.” Or doesn’t fit as well. Or doesn’t look as attractive. Or is simply ugly. But never “immoral.” Because clothes have absolutely nothing to do with morality.

  Try not to link hair with pain. I think of my childhood and how often I cried while my dense long hair was being plaited. I think of how a packet of Smarties chocolates was kept in front of me as a reward if I sat through having my hair done. And for what? Imagine if we had not spent so many Saturdays of our childhood and teenagehood doing our hair. What might we have learned? In what ways might we have grown? What did boys do on Saturdays?

  So with her hair, I suggest that you redefine “neat.” Part of the reason that hair is about pain for so many girls is that adults are determined to conform to a version of “neat” that means Too Tight and Scalp-Destroying and Headache-Infusing.

  We need to stop. I’ve seen girls in school in Nigeria being terribly harassed for their hair not being “neat,” merely because some of their God-given hair had curled up in glorious tight little balls at their temples. Make Chizalum’s hair loose—big plaits and big cornrows, and don’t use a tiny-toothed comb that wasn’t made with our hair texture in mind.

  And make that your definition of “neat.” Go to her school and talk to the administration if you have to. It takes one person to make change happen.

  Chizalum will notice very early on—because children are perceptive—what kind of beauty the mainstream world values. She will see it in magazines and films and television. She will see that whiteness is valued. She will notice that the hair texture that is valued is straight or swingy, and hair that is valued falls down rather than stands up. She will encounter these values whether you like it or not. So make sure that you create alternatives for her to see. Let her know that slim white women are beautiful, and that non-slim, non-white women are beautiful. Let her know that there are many individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition of beauty attractive. You will know your child best, and so you will know best how to affirm her own kind of beauty, how to protect her from looking at her own reflection with dissatisfaction.

  Surround her with a village of aunties, women who have qualities you’d like her to admire. Talk about how much you admire them. Children copy and learn by example. Talk about what you admire about them. I, for example, particularly admire the African American feminist Florynce Kennedy. Some African women I would tell her about are Ama Ata Aidoo, Dora Akunyili, Muthoni Likimani, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett. There are so many African women who are sources of feminist inspiration. Because of what they have done and because of what they have refused to do. Like your grandmother, by the way, that remarkable, strong, sharp-tongued babe.

  Surround Chizalum, too, with a village of uncles. This will be harder, judging from the kind of friends Chudi has. I still cannot get over that blustering man with the over-carved beard who kept saying at Chudi’s last birthday party, “Any woman I marry cannot tell me what to do!!”

  So please find some good non-blustering men. Men like your brother Ugomba, men like our friend Chinakueze. Because the truth is that she will encounter a lot of male bluster in her life. So it is good to have alternatives from very early on.

  I cannot overstate the power of alternatives. She can counter ideas about static “gender roles” if she has been empowered by her familiarity with alternatives. If she knows an uncle who cooks well—and does so with indifference—then she can smile and brush off the foolishness of somebody who claims that “women must do the cooking.”

  ELEVENTH SUGGESTION

  Teach her to question our culture’s selective use of biology as “reasons” for social norms.

  I know a Yoruba woman, married to an Igbo man, who was pregnant with her first child and was thinking of first names for the child. All the names were Igbo.

  Shouldn’t her children have Yoruba first names, since they would have their father’s Igbo surname? I asked, and she said, “A child first belongs to the father. It has to be that way.”

  We often use biology to explain the privileges that men have, the most common reason being men’s physical superiority. It is of course true that men are in general physically stronger than women. But if we truly depended on biology as the root of social norms, then children would be identified as their mother’s rather than their father’s because when a child is born, the parent we are biologically—and incontrovertibly—certain of is the mother. We assume the father is who the mother says the father is. How many lineages all over the world are not biological, I wonder?

  For many Igbo women, the conditioning is so complete that women think of children only as the father’s. I know of women who have left bad marriages but not been “allowed” to take their children or even to see their children because the children belong to the man.

  We also use evolutionary biology to explain male promiscuity, but not to explain female promiscuity, even though it really makes evolutionary sense for women to have many sexual partners—the larger the genetic pool, the greater the chances of bearing offspring who will thrive.

  So teach Chizalum that biology is an interesting and fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm that cannot be changed.

  TWELFTH SUGGESTION

  Talk to her about sex, and start early. It will probably be a bit awkward, but it is necessary.

  Remember that seminar we went to in class 3, where we were supposed to be taught about “sexuality” but instead we listened to vague semi-threats about how “talking to boys” would end up with us being pregnant and disgraced? I remember that hall and that seminar as a place filled with shame. Ugly shame. The particular brand of shame that has to do with being female. May your daughter never encounter it.

  With her, don’t pretend that sex is merely a controlled act of reproduction. Or an “only in marriage” act, because that is disingenuous. (You and Chudi were having sex long before marriage, and she will probably know this by the time she is twelve.) Tell her that sex can be a beautiful thing and that, apart from the obvious physical consequences (for her as the woman!), it can also have emotional consequences. Tell her that her body belongs to her and her alone, that she should never feel the need to say yes to something she does not want, or something she feels pressured to do. Teach her that saying no when no feels right is something to be proud of.

  Tell her you think it’s best to wait until she is an adult before she has sex. But be prepared, because she might not wait until she’s eighteen. And if she doesn’t wait, you have to make sure she is able to tell you that she hasn’t.

  It’s not enough to say you want to raise a daughter who can tell you anything; you have to give her the language to talk to you. And I mean this in a literal way. What should she call it? What word should she use?

  I remember people used “ike” when I was a child to mean both “anus” and “vagina”; “anus” was the easier meaning, but it left everything vague, and I never quite knew how to say, for example, that I had an itch in my vagina.

  Most childhood development experts say it is best to have children call sexual organs by their proper biological names—vagina and penis. I agree, but that is a decision you have to make. You should decide what name you want her to call it, but what matters is that there must be a name, and it cannot be a name that is weighed down with shame.

  To make sure she doesn’t inherit shame from you, you have to free yourself of your own inherited shame. And I know how terribly difficult that is. In every culture in the world, female sexuality is about shame. Ev
en cultures that expect women to be sexy—like many in the West—still do not expect them to be sexual.

  The shame we attach to female sexuality is about control. Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or another. If the justification for controlling women’s bodies were about women themselves, then it would be understandable. If, for example, the reason was “women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do.” Instead the reason is not about women, but about men. Women must be “covered up” to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men.

  And speaking of shame—never, ever link sexuality and shame. Or nakedness and shame. Do not ever make “virginity” a focus. Every conversation about virginity becomes a conversation about shame. Teach her to reject the linking of shame and female biology. Why were we raised to speak in low tones about periods? To be filled with shame if our menstrual blood happened to stain our skirt? Periods are nothing to be ashamed of. Periods are normal and natural, and the human species would not be here if periods did not exist. I remember a man who said a period was like shit. Well, sacred shit, I told him, because you wouldn’t be here if periods didn’t happen.

  THIRTEENTH SUGGESTION

  Romance will happen, so be on board.

  I’m writing this assuming she is hetero-sexual—she might not be, obviously. But I am assuming that because it is what I feel best equipped to talk about.

  Make sure you are aware of the romance in her life. And the only way you can do that is to start very early to give her the language with which to talk to you not only about sex but also about love. I don’t mean you should be her “friend”; I mean you should be her mother, to whom she can talk about everything.

  Teach her that to love is not only to give but also to take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives—we teach girls that a large component of their ability to love is their ability to sacrifice their selves. We do not teach this to boys. Teach her that to love she must give of herself emotionally but she must also expect to be given.

  I think love is the most important thing in life. Whatever kind, however you define it, but I think of it generally as being greatly valued by another human being and greatly valuing another human being. But why do we raise only one half of the world to value this? I was recently in a roomful of young women and was struck by how much of the conversation was about men—what terrible things men had done to them, this man cheated, this man lied, this man promised marriage and disappeared, this husband did this and that.

  And I realized, sadly, that the reverse is not true. A roomful of men do not invariably end up talking about women—and if they do, it is more likely to be in flippant terms rather than as lamentations of life. Why?

  It goes back, I think, to that early conditioning. At a recent baby’s baptism ceremony, guests were asked to write their wishes for the baby girl. One guest wrote: “I wish for you a good husband.” Well-intentioned, but very troubling. A three-month-old baby girl already being told that a husband is something to aspire to. Had the baby been a boy, it would not have occurred to that guest to wish for him “a good wife.”

  And speaking of women lamenting about men who “promise” marriage and then disappear—isn’t it odd that in most societies in the world today, women generally cannot propose marriage? Marriage is such a major step in your life, and yet you cannot take charge of it; it depends on a man asking you. So many women are in long-term relationships and want to get married but have to wait for the man to propose—and often this waiting becomes a performance, sometimes unconscious and sometimes not, of marriage-worthiness. If we apply the first Feminism Tool here, then it makes no sense that a woman who matters equally has to wait for somebody else to initiate what will be a major life change for her.

  A Feminism Lite adherent once told me that the fact that our society expects men to make proposals proves that women have the power, because only if a woman says yes can marriage happen. The truth is this—the real power resides in the person who asks. Before you can say yes or no, you first must be asked. I truly wish for Chizalum a world in which either person can propose, in which a relationship has become so comfortable, so joy-filled, that whether or not to embark on marriage becomes a conversation, itself filled with joy.

  I want to say something about money here. Teach her never, ever to say such nonsense as “my money is my money and his money is our money.” It is vile. And dangerous—to have that attitude means that you must potentially accept other harmful ideas as well. Teach her that it is NOT a man’s role to provide. In a healthy relationship, it is the role of whoever can provide to provide.

  FOURTEENTH SUGGESTION

  In teaching her about oppression, be careful not to turn the oppressed into saints. Saintliness is not a prerequisite for dignity. People who are unkind and dishonest are still human, and still deserve dignity. Property rights for rural Nigerian women, for example, is a major feminist issue, and the women do not need to be good and angelic to be allowed their property rights.

  There is sometimes, in the discourse around gender, the assumption that women are supposed to be morally “better” than men. They are not. Women are as human as men are. Female goodness is as normal as female evil.

  And there are many women in the world who do not like other women. Female misogyny exists, and to evade acknowledging it is to create unnecessary opportunities for anti-feminists to try to discredit feminism. I mean the sort of anti-feminists who will gleefully raise examples of women saying “I am not a feminist” as though a person born with a vagina making this statement somehow automatically discredits feminism. That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. It shows us, too, that not all women are feminists and not all men are misogynists.

  FIFTEENTH SUGGESTION

  Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference. And the reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. And by teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world.

  She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world, and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know—we cannot know—everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for the things we do not know, and it is enough to make peace with that.

  Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.

  Tell her that some people are gay, and some are not. A little child has two daddies or two mommies because some people just do. Tell her that some people go to mosque and others go to church and others go to different places of worship and still others don’t worship at all, because that is just the way it is for some people.

  You say to her: You like palm oil but some people don’t like palm oil.

  She says to you: Why?

  You say to her: I don’t know. It’s just the way the world is.

  Please note that I am not suggesting that you raise her to be “non-judgmental,” which is a commonly used expression these days, and which slightly worries me. The general sentiment behind the idea is a fine one, but “non-judgmental” can easily devolve into meaning “don’t have an opinion about anything” or “I keep my opinions to myself.” And so, instead of that, what I hope for Chizalum is this: that she will be full of opinions, and that her opinions will come from an informed, humane, and broad-minded place.

  May she be healthy and happy. May her life be whatever she wants it to be.

  Do you have a headache after reading all this? Sorry.
Next time don’t ask me how to raise your daughter feminist.

  With love, oyi gi,

  Chimamanda

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essay We Should All Be Feminists. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *