The Ritual

The Ritual

I wouldn't dare to ask anybody whether he/she ever saw this video Monday's Girls, partly because it is not a feature/theater movie but a nonfiction that was originated in BBC's TV program. This is a film that describes a virginity accessment ritual that a girl goes through in a tribal community in Nigeria. To get officially validated as a virgin is equal to get ready to mate and to marry in their society. What they practically do is to have girls bare their breast to the whole community after a certain period of special preparation with a number of obligations such as what to eat and how to spend the period being the least activeso that they would gain weight. They are a sort of confined in a house during the whole time in the preparation where older women attend them to carry out the preparation without any interruption or any excuse of not performing the duty. The girls in the period have their legs tightly held by a set of the equipment of steel coils to seriously limit their physical move.

The camera follows two girls from different backgrounds to make a comparison and the case study from the differences; one is a local girl who is taking the ceremony very seriously and looking forward to participating it. The other is a girl whose father is a powerful figure in the tribe; she is temporarily back to the place from where she currently lives to attend school to study music. Since she is getting the higher educaiton, privilaged to be exposed to other cultures in the big city, she scorns the ritual and the culture of her tribe back in the community to be primitive and disaproves of the women's condition. She argues and causes constant conflicts with the locals everytime anything she does not want to give in is forced. She has to come back here, though, just because she does not want to let her father lose his face in the community. She did not necessarily want to jeopardize her reputation as a woman in the community, either: if she avoids the public ritual of the virgin acessment, it would be possible that people rumor that she was not a virgin, therefore she ran away from it. Imagine the pressure she had to face.

On the day of the ritual, the first girl 'passes' the ritual and gets approved to be a legitimately marriagable woman whereas the latter one fails for she couldn't bring herself to parade in the ritual that she did not have any faith in.

"I had to gulp some beer to get over certain fear and embarrasement before I marched in front of the public baring my breast. My father encouraged me and let me drink before the ceremony. After a bit, I did not know what I was at anymore," the first girl says.

She and all other gils who marched as baring their breats had the offcial validation from one of men who criticized and evaluated the girls shape that was supposed to be the proofs of their virginity and maturity to mate.

"Now you are fine," one the virgin examiners, who is dressed in a suit that has got a very loud pattern just as pajamas says to thier breasts offcially bared to their faces.

Wow, it sounds so scientific that I really believe these guys in pajamas and their grounds to judge the girls. I would never think these guys stupid rules are just another excuse of public humiliation of women. Nor would I say like it is shockingly same as the strip club environment. If only these official virgins get paid for their being so humiliated for the ritual that is too unworthy, really.

What happens to the other who did not pass. She just gets away after she failed the ceremony because of the stigma she has brought to the family. But I really thought that I would rather not pass that sort of test, either. However, I figure the predicament of the girl and how lethal it can be in the environment and have to sigh.

It is a COMMON problem of "the Third world" feminism; I know how easy it is to criticize the way the whole institutions of the third world function and cannot help admitting how similar the sex industry operates. Shame on them when they brazenly call it the rite passage and pressure young women to strip and call them finally 'right.' However, the toughest thing is where the second one, or anybody like her who is torn between two different values, is situated. She knows how the community works and pressures and is fully aware of what is wrong in respect of women's treatment and the role assigned to them in the community. But then, it is very difficult to refuse and leave it behind when you're a part of the institution. Especially for a woman such as her, all the previladges she has enjoyed in her life consists of the status she has in the community that she scorns.

In a scene where the first girl is put to go through the preparatory period in the house of confinement, married women of the community sit around her to lecture what the girl should expect from a married life.
"There are good men who treat you nice and gentle. But there are men who treat you brutally and beat you up in the marriage. All you can do is to pray."

What?

Oh, my. But haven't they forgotten that they have their legs to run away if the marriage turned out the latter instead of praying? The trick of making theim so inactive that they become big might have to do with this point: the doctrine is how to keep women inactive and immobile so that they would be paralysed mentally, and of course, physically.

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