This November, the internet got everyone glued to the #ceiling challenge, this was a series of videos by different young women on tiktok and instagram reels, where they glued their phones to the ceiling and started twerking. As I was lazily scrolling through this challenge, I came across a video where one person was shaming women who participated in the challenge and they were sat that the only people who would participate in the challenge are people without fathers. They went on to explain how the people lacked loved from home which is why they are looking for validation from the internet. They also said that these ladies who are participating in the challenge do not respect their bodies because they did not have fathers to teach them to respect their bodies. The internet seemed to agree with this analysis and as I scrolled further, I realized that most people in the comments sections of the videos had the same sentiments as well.
This got me reflecting on some of the conversations that I have had with people in social spaces about girls with the so called “daddy issues.” I have heard people say that children who grew up in broken families are the easiest to manipulate in any relationship. In courtship, they are fall prey to date rape and are usually relegated to bootycalls, situationships and sneaky links. They are usually not regarded with respect because apparently they do not “belong” to anyone. Most of these young women would have learnt to make their own money, still it does not award them the respect they yearn for, and instead, people will use and throw them away because they supposedly have been through worse and are strong people who can rise from any situation. They have more to do to heal their inner child before they can remove themselves from toxic situations.
The feminist movement over the years has done justice in advocating for body ownership and the right to choice. We regard women as people who are able to make informed choices about what they want to wear or how they choose to dance in front of the camera, regardless of their background and upbringing. They own their own bodies and they have the right to be sexually liberal if they want to. However, there is no amount of political correctness and therapy can restore the dignity of one who has been dehumanized by being denied an identity.
This brings me to interrogate the long standing question that still does not have sufficient answers; “Where are the men?” As a lover of standup comedy, I have listened to jokes being made about black fathers who left their homes to look for a smoke and never came back. This is very dark humor that we have normalized in order to deal with the sad and embarrassing truths of our society. Most have argued that the mothers are the reason that the fathers deserted their homes and children. But what did the kids do? While dancing on tiktok is a liberating choice, being born into a broken family and having demons to fight on a daily basis is not a choice. They are already facing the fact that their parents failed to accumulate generational wealth for them and they are looking for money on tiktok and other social media platforms.
I believe that this is a crisis of masculinity. Men have failed not only to lead and provide for their families but to give their children an identity as well. While most young women are resorting to exotic dancing and “onlyfans”, a lot of young men are committing suicide lately. Maybe it is time to honestly address what our fathers did wrong in our society.
Qhawekazi's Diary 