The girl in the cute dress with the patience of a saint: Nigeria diary 5
This is the story about a girl in a cute dress who got slutshamed at the Nigerian Social Security (NIN) office.
This girl was going to the NIN office to get her social security card in order to renew her Nigerian passport. She wore a beautiful blue and yellow floral print tiered dress that had buttons down the front and fun puff sleeves. The dress landed just an inch or two above her knees (this will become important later) and had a fabric belt that she used as a hair scarf. She went with her mom, her great-aunt and her great-aunt’s contact Katie, who helped facilitate social security and other government related paperwork processes in Nigeria. The four of them drove to a government-owned area that was many acres big and had huge gates with military officers guarding the entrance. After being waved in, the four drove through the government compound which contained a military training base, a couple of churches, mosques and even a government-owned university. They pulled up to a very small, one room office that was just a few yards away from an open car garage where numerous military men were hanging out. It had been pouring the whole day, so the girl grabbed her small umbrella, opened it up and scurried around to the other side of the car to cover her great-aunt as they walked into the office.
Not even two minutes after the girl in the cute dress and the rest of her party got settled in the small office, a woman came banging on the door yelling in Igbo “She can’t be in here! They saw her on the cameras; she can’t be in here! I’m going to get in trouble, she has to leave, she needs to get out!”. The girl in the cute dress was trying to decipher the parts of the conversation she could understand in Igbo but” soon looked to her mom for translation. Her mom explained that someone in the security office had seen the girl in the cute dress from the cameras outside of the office. They said her dress was “far too short” and “inappropriate” for her to be in that area of the compound because of religious rules. It was “disrespectiful” to the religious military men on the base. The girl in the cute dress was confused. She hadn’t seen any signs of a dress code anywhere, and her great-aunt’s associate Katie, who came to this office frequently, had said nothing about a dresscode. An argument exploded between the frantic woman at the door, the office worker who was dealing with the NIN papers, Katie and the girl’s mom. The office worker bargained with the frantic woman that if the girl covered her legs with a spare blanket in the office, she would be allowed to stay. The office worker, we’ll call her mean witch #1, gave the girl in the cute dress a blanket to cover herself. Mean witch #1 continued to berate the girl in cute dress saying, “How do people come here and not know about the dress code?” and “It’s so disrespectful, it makes no sense to come here dressed like that” and “People don’t think when they get dressed, why would you dress like that?”
A few things to note:
No one had informed the girl in the cute dress of any dress code, and there had been no signage anywhere on the compound to indicate of one
Mean witch #1 made it seem as if the girl intentionally wanted to upset the people on the compound. However, let the record state, THE GIRL HAD NEVER BEEN TO THE OFFICE BEFORE. OR THE COMPOUND. SHE WAS NOT AWARE OF THE RULES.
The dress was simply above the knee. Mean witch #1 made it out to be like the girl was wearing pasties and a thong, when in fact she was just wearing a very cute and tasteful dress that was both stylish and practical for the muggy and sticky Nigerian weather.
The girl in the cute dress sat quiet, steaming in her anger. Mean witch #1 and the male office worker (mean witch #2) continued to harass her about the dress and speak about the girl as if she wasn’t in the room. When it came time to start the girl’s paperwork, mean witch #1 said in Igbo “Well, it’s her turn now but she’s on her phone and we need her phone. I don’t know what she’s doing”. This is where mean witch #1 went wrong; the girl in the cute dress knew quite a bit of Igbo and could understand exactly what had just been said. The girl’s head shot up saying, “What do you mean? I’m ready right now. I’ve just been waiting here and no one said anything before”. If mean witch #1 wanted to continue with her attitude, the girl was oh so willing and eager to give attitude back; double it, even. Somehow, the girl in the cute dress with the patience of a saint made it through the rest of the appointment as mean witch # 1 and #2 continued to hurl snarky comments. Finally, after biting her tongue for damn near an hour and a half, the appointment was over. At the instructions of Katie, the girl in the cute dress with the patience of a saint had to get into the car with a blanket around her legs, because God forbid the military men saw even a glimpse of her legs.
The end.
Spoiler alert, if you didn’t get already, I was the girl in the cute dress with the patience of a saint. I was slutshamed at the NIN office for showing quite literally two inches of my knees. While every aspect of the story is deeply infuriating, what’s funny (less funny haha and more not funny at all) is that these supposedly “pious” Christian or Muslim men on these military bases that impose a dress code are the same men who frequent strip clubs and assault underage women. For them to act like seeing a woman’s shoulder blade or knee is scandalous or sinful is laughable when they willingly and frequently engage with the sex work industry and take advantage of underage women- both of which are against their religion. They do not care about actually following the rules of their religion; they just care about imposing their power on women.
There’s this beautiful thing we have called self-control and basic respect. However, for men in Nigeria, especially religious, military men, the ever-strong Nigerian patriarchal society has decided that men have free reign to create or defy laws as they please.
