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What makes the blesser conversation interesting is that it reveals how social media has become the new force in upholding old and traditional structures
The man who would become my husband told me how much he earned on our first date. It wasn’t encouraging. If you’ve ever dated an entrepreneur, you’ll know what I mean.
On our second date, I offered to pay the bill, and he breezily answered, “sure”. Let me admit that I inwardly bristled.
“Ooooookay, then…” was my mental note as I reached for my bag.
Too soon into our dating relationship, he had no qualms about handing me his bankcard if I was doing my own ATM errands. This frankness was good grounding for our money conversation later, but it filled me with foreboding then.
Those years were some of his toughest in business, and his strategy was clear from the get-go – if my money matters a lot to you, then here it is, make your decisions.
My reaction: Me? Money? Matter? Hawu, kanjani manje … Did you see that I have my own things, by the way?
But it did matter. I was being so phoney, only wearing my financial independence as a political badge. I was voicing my feminism. I mean, I once dated a guy who probably made more money than I’ll have in a lifetime, yet I wanted to argue over a shared pizza bill.
Just to wys him, like Julius Malema. His exasperation at my feigned attempt at paying was palpable.
I was offering to pay for dates as a courtesy, but I fully expected men to wrestle me to the ground for the bill.
So many heterosexual women – not just the ones with weaves and popping cleavages, even the ones with Afros and purple lipstick – like to be blessed.
For women raised with privilege, it’s an expectation. While for us, their poorer cousins, it exists as a thinly concealed wish.
This is why I get frustrated when I see the “blesser” conversation conveniently shift into poverty politics. Blessees are poor, crass or uneducated young girls (read: black) who need to buy weaves.
The KwaZulu-Natal provincial government is declaring war on blessers to save girls who are younger than 18, and now the conversation has shifted to sugar daddies.
Yet what makes the blesser conversation new and interesting is that it reveals how many more of us are trapped by gender norms and how social media has become the new force in upholding these old and traditional structures. By not honestly reflecting on it, it’s robbing us of an opportunity to talk about heterosexual relationships and money.
Because many more women, across the racial and class spectrum, continue to live with the fantasy of being taken care of, and the more public the blessing, the better. We’ll take that even if it does not match the reality; so long as he’s the one pulling out his card when we are at restaurants with friends.
Chivalry is medieval, but it lives. To begin its war on blessers, the KwaZulu-Natal government would need to start picking at the stitching of Zulu culture. If there are levels to this blessing thing, then President Jacob Zuma is at the top.
If history is responsible, then chivalry has been emboldened by Western pop culture. One of my generation’s most important movies about man-woman relationships was Pretty Woman.
It’s about an incompetent prostitute who sells her affections to a sad and lonely businessman, and shows off her “blessings” to some haughty boutique attendants she hardly knows.
This generation’s pop-culture influences are scarier. Our postmodern peers are reality stars and friends on social media. They are not fiction like Julia Roberts, but they are reality, albeit manufactured.
They are on Instagram, with its high female user base, filling it with snaps of expensive gifts, engagements rings and baecations.
The question we should be asking is: why is this such a strong influence on women, many of whom are working and independent?
This is what a mother, who recently talked to Sunday World about her 22-year-old daughter, is trying to understand. Why, with her privilege, a Jeep from her mother and business school education, is she accepting money from a 54-year-old man?
Follow me on Twitter @joonji
