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Sisters, shame the devil, fire that man: Grooming can make or break your relationship

I SHOULD have known something was wrong when my girlfriend's best friend sidled up to me and said, "Freddie, may I please have a word with you?"

My girlfriend and her friends knew very well that I hated being called "Freddie". Everybody has always called me Fred.

But you could also call me by my "home" name Vusi, even though I don't like being called that because Vusis are tsotsis.

Or you could even get away with calling me by my full "school" name Frederick.

Calling me Freddie was asking for war. It made me sound like a skollie with no teeth - "Preddie, can you give me a skyfmybroer."

So when that girl called me "Freddie" on the veranda of Phezulu High School in 1983, I should have klapped her. As it happened, my armpits started itching and my eyelashes twitched. Foreboding manifests itself in mysterious ways in the Khumalo body.

Anyway, having called me Freddie, the damsel proffered a piece of paper. Unthinkingly, I accepted it, unfolded it and read it. The words scribbled there were sparse: "Our golden cup is broken!"

Damn! My girlfriend had fired me, through a puny little message on a puny little piece of paper, delivered by a puny little damsel who reduced me to a puny little thing by calling me Freddie.

When I finished reading the piece of paper and lifted my eyes across the courtyard, I saw my erstwhile girlfriend and her circle of friends. They were watching me, laughing their heads off.

What had I done to deserve such cruel treatment? The following day I discovered that my girlfriend had decided I was not boyfriend material when she saw me wearing a georgette shirt. The Concise Oxford dictionary describes georgette as follows: "A thin silk or crepe dress material."

A georgette shirt, worn with tight-fitting Bang Bang stretch jeans and Salvatore shoes with slightly raised heels, was fashionable among those of us who were called American Dudes or Ivies.

With our hair permed, we regarded ourselves as "worldly and sophisticated" - a cut above the thugs called amapantsula who walked around in Jack Purcell tackies and Dickies or Lee suits, a scowl on their faces, and a matchstick dangling from the corner of the mouth.

Anyway, memories of being fired for wearing a georgette shirt were rekindled by a story I read the other day in which actress Eva Mendes revealed that tracksuit pants were the number one cause of divorce in the US. An exaggeration perhaps, but the point is that clothes and grooming can make or break your relationship.

I have at least three women friends who won't allow me to see their faces before they put on their make-up. They believe a woman without make-up is a turn-off to men. Mind you, these are platonic friends yet they still believe I would fire them if they were to show me their bare faces.

I know a guy who fired his girlfriend when he discovered, the morning after, that the nice even teeth she kept flashing the previous night were not hers.

But another friend of mine got me laughing for a long time when he showed his girlfriend the door because she wouldn't stop breaking wind once they were in bed. Yet there's a friend who enjoys a girl who farts and belches without compunction: "It shows you she's genuine, she's got nothing to hide. 'Take me as I am'."

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Then there's this friend of mine who will simply lose interest in a woman he's been trying to woo if he discovers a pair of full panties in her bathroom: "A woman who wears full panties has no ambition. The minute she settles down with you, she'll let go of herself and become a frumpy housewife. Run for cover, buddy."

But then there are guys who love women who walk around the yard - even to the point of walking to the next-door neighbours - in their hair rollers.

Yugh! I used to love Whitney Houston, before the drugs exposé, before I realised her entire front row of teeth was false, but, more importantly, before I saw pictures of her in hair rollers.

Another thing that turns me off in a woman, even a platonic friend, are those tights. Especially if they are black. I don't care if she's wearing them at the gym or in the privacy of her house, they are yucky. Yes, I know there are some women with bodies that look angelic in tights. But then they are few and far between. Therefore, no tights is a safer proposition.

If I had the power of a woman, I would ban men from wearing those hats called spotties. If I could be fired for wearing a classy thing such as a georgette shirt, what makes you women tolerate chaps who have the temerity to defile their bodies by wearing Dickies suits and spotties?

Sisters, shame the devil and fire the man who does that.

lComments: fredkhumalo@post.harvard.edu or twitter @FredKhumalo