Can we stop labelling over 30 as desperate?

princess abumere

September 21, 2017 6:36 PM

Dear society, I think it's time we gave the black, single thirty year old woman a break.

Is there such a thing as getting married late? Before you answer that, in Nigeria a woman getting married at the age of 28 or older is considered as getting married late and she’s lucky if anyone comes her way at all.

In a skit by Yomi Black, he plays out two scenarios of two women planning a wedding. In the first part, a girl under 30 is talking to her fiancé excitedly about plans for her wedding - how she wants to look perfect and the details of her wedding. In response to her demand, the man just smiles.

Meanwhile the second scenario is with a lady over 35 and it seems as though she’s just pleading with the man to marry her.

Guy: “ Or should we just do registery”?

Lady: “Yes, yes”.

Guy: "We just forget about engagement and wedding"?

Lady: "It’s ok".

This skit wasn’t funny to me.

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It’s really upsetting that society and now the (Nigerian) media keeps portraying single women over the age of 30 as desperate for marriage.

Forget that she has a beautiful life - great job, a car, she travels, has an active social life - to the society her life is incomplete because she does not have a ring. And there’ll always be those aunties who’ll be quick to remind her of this:

“Just settle.”

“Don’t be picky, do you know how old you are.”

And the most annoying one: “Your clock is ticking! ”

They’re always so quick to grab your hand at weddings and pray that “you’ll be next”.

One woman told Pulse, “I’m really sick and tired of it”.

Understandably, we are a family-based society where you are expected to get married at a certain age and start having kids but we forget that as the society advances, the lifestyle changes and now both men and women are not getting married as early as they did many years ago.

Why do we continue to judge single women in their 30s so harshly?

I think it’s time we stopped this.

princess abumere