Leading Lady

If one thing can keep me glued to a screen it is a romantic comedy, all the drama, all the cheese, all the suspense, one liners (cheesy one liners at that). One thing I have noticed after over one hundred of these cheesy movies is that no matter how amazingly beautiful, intelligent, witty the supporting actress is, it’s always the leading lady that everyone is rooting for: She captivates her audience, we sympathize with her, we want to be her (because at the end she always wins), and if your tear ducts are anything like mine the leading lady makes us cry with the sort of happiness that smiling just cannot capture.

All that being said I really wonder why an increasing number of Nigerian ladies are positioning themselves to play the supporting role. People often say of Nigerian ‘ladies’ that they are not in any way deterred if they find out that the subject / object of their desire has a wife, fiancé, girlfriend, in actual fact this makes him more desirable to her because she see’s that he has the potential to be “tied down”.

Like I mentioned in one of my first blog posts, I don’t get why people go to nail bars or hair salons and talk without any inhibitions about the intricate details of their lives, by the time you leave you know their sisters name, how many trips they made to their GP last week, how their boyfriend insulted them by sending them a common blackberry curve as opposed to securing them one of the test iPhone 5’s that are not due in shops till early 2012. The topic of these Nail bar DMC’s has taken a large shift towards who your boyfriend is (married, or otherwise disposed boyfriend), what his category is - some boyfriends are for mtn credit (some for 500 Naira, others 3k, some 10k and above), some boyfriends are for handbags and shoes, others for exotic trips to Thailand, Brazil, Zanzibar some others for housing and accommodation, a child maybe if you want to make your funding life long. It seems to me that it has become the norm for people to play the supporting actress, the side dish, the other attraction, and they do so without shame. In the same way that no effort is taken to conceal the fact tha the long tresses tumbling down your back are in fact those borrowed (bought) off the head of a deceased Asian lady, no effort is taken to conceal being the girlfriend of a man that is not available.

I do not intend to pin blame for these shifting dynamics - is it the lady's (the term in this case I use loosely, as it is not synonymous with such behaviour) fault for accepting less than she deserves? or is it the mans fault for making himself available to more than one woman at any given time? It is not really a debate worth having. What is more important to note is that happiness and playing the supporting role are not easy bedmates, either the guilt of being the cause for someone elses pain or the knowledge that you are the sloppy seconds will slowly chip at all the happiness you think you are gaining.


Don’t be the footnote in somebody else’s love story, everybody IS the leading lady in their own life and should never ever settle for anything less. The role of supporting actress will always be on borrowed time, and I speak in no uncertain terms when i say that at some point the rental period will be up.

Xoxo.