Are pink lips for men a cry for attention?

HOT pink lips are the latest craze - for men. Not only are men now slinging man bags, wearing skirts, thanks to Kanye West, they are also sporting pink lips too.

And I'm not talking about the type acquired from years of imbibing the most potent of home brews, known as imbamba, in the many shebeens that pepper our townships.

No, it is not the inflammation that identifies drinkers of the concoction, whose ingredients are a well-kept family secret passed on from one generation master brewer to the next.

Some say it is the brake fluid that is added to the sorghum brew that turns lips pink - and men into slugs, who slide down their chairs only to coil into a foetal position as the sun goes down at shebeens all over the townships of our beautiful country.

Others are more crude, saying it is the urine of the most nubile heir to the secret recipe, gathered in a potty at the break of dawn when the drunks are singing the pity-me anthems that gives the "beer" its devastating sting. But I digress.

I'm talking about a sobering trend of pink lips that is sweeping the streets of Nigeria. Men in Africa's most populous country are tattooing their lower lips a bright pink to lure the fairer sex.

Tattoo parlours are getting more and more men asking for "pink lips". For between R310 to R350, depending on how full their lips are, men can have their bottom lips inked pink. And it is the men who are a hue darker than dark who have fallen victim to this trend, setting tongues wagging.

Apparently the men don't like it that their lips match their beautiful dark skin, so they inject a pink ink into their lower lips to beautify themselves for the opposite sex.

What's next?

Kanye has already set the trend with the men-in-skirts look. Fellow rap artist Asap Rocky is also slowly making it cool for guys to ditch their pants for a dress.

David Beckham is supposed to be the epitome of manliness with his man bags. Singer Seal paints his fingernails and toenails. Didier Drogba prefers his hair relaxed and in a ponytail.

Are men - as more and more women become empowered - feeling the need to go back to basics, to the very simple form of attracting the fairer sex they know? Allure.

Is this an expression of their wild side?

In the animal kingdom it is the lion, not the lioness, that has the big hair, and the fuller and darker the mane the more attractive the lion is to the opposite sex. It is the male that does the cat walk.

The male species in the animal kingdom have bigger and more elaborate horns. They get more stripes and more spots than the female of the species. In the bird world the most colourful birds are male.

The peacock wears a beautiful crown and sashays around in a long colourful train, with eyes so bright they blind the peahens senseless. Peahens, on the other hand, are dull and have nothing to display.

Are these fashion trends, which borrow from the attention-grabbing animal and bird species, not an expression of a yearning for attention from our men.

Is women empowerment and more and more women working, some even doing hard labour or in jobs that were the preserve of men, creating a layer of men who feel emasculated?

Women's demands for a man who is "more educated than me, earns more than me, is taller than me, is fitter than me" leaves a layer of men who are finding it hard to lure the right partners because women empowerment has set the standard so high.

There's a Xhosa saying "ubuhle bendoda zinkomo zayo", which loosely translated, means that a man's worth or value is determined by how well he can provide for his woman.

It is getting harder and harder for men to provide for their women, what with more and more women making more money.

And Beyoncé does not help to balance the situation, with her choruses "to the left, to the left" and "who runs the world?".

A man's worth is being questioned, and they have nowhere to turn but to their wild ways. It's no wonder the only option for some is "to the wild to the wild". At least there the male is always king.