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Love at first sight is scarce when you are shaped like a broom with dololo booty

Some would think a petite shorty like myself would be spared body issues that have haunted women for decades.

Truth is, as far as the female body is concerned, all shapes and sizes bring a certain degree of inadequacy. I have since accepted that my struggle to fit the African perception of the womanly figure will never end.

There is a recent uprise of a near-perfect shape among my peers that has plunged my confidence a further six inches shorter - the extra-small waist, large booty brigade. This lot has godly cleavage too.

Then, as if to spite fashion designers, they magically fit all that booty into high-waist skinny jeans and look magnificent!

It's an impossible standard really, considering I'm still trying to find out if breast-focused foreplay will really encourage the growth of my boobs.

And I squat, and jog and sit with my legs crossed, but nothing has happened to my gluteus since I became a teenager. That in itself compromises my position in a society obsessed with physical appearances.

And with my people, there is very little love at first sight that happens when, like myself, you are shaped like a broom.

While visiting my mother this past week, I sorted through my old clothes. A certain pair of jeans triggered an almost forgotten memory about the ridiculousness of my size.

A past romantic ambition had reached a stage where I would leave some of my clothes at my lover's place. This particular beau had a pre-teen son who would visit him occasionally.

Like most single parents juggling co-parenting, they had plenty of disagreements on the issue of introducing partners to their children.

I am not especially inclined to instant families, so I avoided encounters with the kid, much to the pleasure of the mother.

Then, one Sunday morning I couldn't locate my new pair of designer jeans, which I bought from the children's section for reasons of both affordability and fit.

The father had packed them with the kid's luggage when he returned to his mother the night before. It wasn't long before the drama started.

Imagine a begrudged mother who finds worn girl's jeans in her son's case. First, she bawled at him for being such a lousy father that he bought his son girls' clothes. Of course, he thought clarifying that the jeans belonged to his girlfriend would cure the situation, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

She then had a devastating fit at how he has degenerated into dating teenagers. Considering how chubby and heavy the man was, I could just imagine the claptrap that flooded this woman's mind. She had assumed - perhaps correctly so, by any social standard - that no adult woman could possibly fit into jeans that small.

I once sat with a group of male friends at a shisanyama for sundowners. One friend was particularly drawn to the rear view of a lady sitting with her back towards us.

Her jeans were painfully tight. I have always admired the strength of denim textile and its ability to hold it together through impossible stretches.

Her beautiful behind sparked a bout of jokes around the flatness of my buttocks and how, if I were ever to wear traditional regalia, the isidwaba would fall off my body. My friend's desire to see this lady's face and complete the picture was finally fulfilled. She turned around to face us. It was a local gay man. It was a man whose booty puts mine to shame! It was yet another reminder that my hips will never grow to stress jeans and hold stares from men. Worse, the attention of single men is not only stolen by pretty women shaped like wasps, but I have to contend with gay men too.

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