Silhouette’s challenge was one of those moments during the COVID-19 lockdowns across the globe. In the middle of the lockdown, a lot of people were bored, with little or no interaction with humans. Many lost their sanity, while others devised a coping mechanism to live through the experience of being locked in one place.

Many didn’t appreciate the idea, but the thought of losing your life to COVID-19 was more devastating. Silhouette challenge became more than a hashtag, where many social media users, jumped into the display of nudity in an unclear reddish background short clip, with a track “Put your head on my shoulder” by Paul Anka

Hold me in your arms, baby

Squeeze me oh-so-tight

Show me that you love me too

It became increasingly popular as both males and females were involved in the challenge, however, little did we have heard the last of the effect of the hashtag.

In extremely beautiful prose from a young writer, named Reginald Okeke, penned down his experience and how he broke up with his girlfriend who wanted to do the challenge but needed his permission, but his response to the now ex-girlfriend, is something you would least expect.

He emphasizes on that he is not a personal psychotherapist and zookeeper.

So, it was during the height of the infamous silhouette challenge and I was on my own, minding my business like a good communist when my now ex-girlfriend asked me if she should do it. Sincerely, I told her to do whatever she felt like and to my surprise she shouted, saying that

She expected me to scold and advise her against even suggesting such dissolute behavior. I gave her the look I reserve for the mildly insane and asked her why she would ask me if she already felt like that. Then she launched into an impassioned speech of how I am supposed to be guiding her and telling her what to do. Mind you, she was a full year older than I was, so she wasn’t some teenager I was ‘’deceiving’’ or anything like that.

I looked at her and wondered what incredible poor judgment drove me to ‘’razzle’’ her in the beginning. It was not the first time she had displayed such neurotic behavior, the most unforgettable one was when she deleted her number from my phone as I watched, I took it as a sign she was breaking up with me and said something to the effect of ‘’well it was fun while it lasted [it really wasn’t] and

good bye’’ at which she threw herself violently on the bed and started rolling like demons were being bound and cast out of her. Fearing for my own safety, I told I thought that that was her intention in deleting her number from my phone and she screamed ‘’you should have stopped nah!’’. It was then I realized I was dealing with a crazy person.

I broke up with her soon after the silhouette incident and I have no doubt that she goes around telling anyone who will listen that I am a weak-willed, limp-dicked, degenerate fvckboy who was not man enough to handle her. And that last part is the main reason I am writing this: this perverse belief that many women have that they are wild things a man has to tame, tolerate and control in order to be worthy of them. Now, there is this notion popular in feminist circles that ‘’women are not rehabilitation centers for damaged or broken men’’ and I agree with that notion completely, 100%. But I always wonder why the inverse of that statement isn’t widely acknowledged to also be true, that men are not therapists or life coaches for undisciplined and neurotic women.

For, if a woman knows she has personality and mental health issues shouldn’t seek the appropriate help or develop the necessary self-control to curb them rather than finding an innocent man who will tolerate her excesses; is she not taking advantage of a man’s kindness if she is with him because she knows he will put up with whatever she nonsense she does and does she not make herself vulnerable to manipulative men who will use her mental instability to dominate them in a way prejudicial to their wellbeing.

I support feminism and will call myself a feminist if asked but I must recognize that it is an ideology almost hopelessly flawed by the double standards of its adherents, the example germane to present context is how they always say that they want men who support women to be

whatever they want to be, to do whatever they want to do, to dress however they want to dress etc. but in reality they go for the most domineering and most controlling man they can find; verily, I say that it is easier for an abusive and toxic man to get a woman than a ‘’good guy’’ to the same. Because most good men or people in general don’t want to control or dominate anybody, they just want to live and let live hence the ones willing to give women the control and dominance they crave tend to be the questionable ones that if you see me in your DM or I stop you on the street, please I am applying for the post of boyfriend or fvckbuddy not personal psychotherapist and zookeeper. Thank you.

As a laissez faire type of guy, who believes that people should do whatever they want as long as it harms no one, I’m not bitter that my more domineering counterparts get most of the girls for as they say in pidgin ‘’woman no be achievement’’ but I just want every woman to know that if you see me in your DM or I stop you on the street, please I am applying for the post of boyfriend or fvckbuddy not personal psychotherapist and zookeeper. Thank you.