How far will Ghanaian women go to please their men?

The actress who is most infamous for her voluptuous figure was featured on an episode of "Love and Sex Around the World", a show hosted by Amanpour where the latter explores the practices around and politics of sex around the world.

After excerpts made the rounds a few weeks ago, Episode 5 of the show has been released on the Cable News Network and, let's just say, Moesha Buduong offered some very interesting insight.

Sitting in what looks like a beauty parlour in Ghana's capital, Accra, Amanpour asks Moesha if Ghanaian women are as obsessed about beauty as their western sisters.

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"Yes, they are, they care for their skin, their body. Any beauty product. Anything that has to do with the skin...", she responds.

"And you work in beauty products, I mean, you're an actress", Amanpour continues, inquiring about her work with beauty brands.

"I've been signed for a stretch mark cream. Then there's the vagina tightening gel...", she says of her beauty endorsements.

For pleasure and expectations

Few words can describe the shock that registered on Christiane Amanpour's face as she shrieked "What?!".

"Vagina tightening gel", Moesha repeats, "It tightens the vagina, and people get it a lot, so many girls use it"

"Why?", a shaken Amanpour asks.

"For pleasure", she responds., "For your man, for your boyfriend or your husband"

When Amanpour asks if the women care about their own sexual pleasure, Moesha responds.

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"In Ghana especially, we try to please the men first, that's why we use all the things to just make them enjoy the sex", she responds, "We please our men before we think about ourselves"

"You need to be a freak in the sheets to keep your man", she adds.

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Following the outrage that greeted the excerpts, most people were enthusiastic to see just how much Moesha had said and more importantly, how sex and the dynamics between men and women in Ghana had been portrayed.

While they may be a bit shocking, most of the things Moesha says are a stark reality, not only in Ghana but in neighbouring countries like Nigeria.

An imbalanced relationship

Sex is mostly treated as the object of a transaction; something that is given by one person and taken by another in exchange for a consideration.

For Moesha, as she made clear on the show, her companionship and sexual pleasure is a recompense for her bills, upkeep and financial sustenance which her married lover takes care of.

Using vagina tightening creams only goes further to prove the imbalance in sexual relations and the lengths to which women often go to meet a certain standard and satisfy their men.

We do not know if the use of these creams is as rampant as Moesha suggests and we suppose users are very discreet about it, but the health implications of such a practice must also be considered.

More chaste brothers and sisters may be inclined to blame westernisation and exposure for this but traditional methods that give the same result have been practised around West Africa for decades.

It then begs the question of who, if anyone, is to blame. African women have felt the need to make sex more pleasurable for their partners. But do these men also feel that need to do the same?