Women who believe white wine makes them do crazy things!

Written by Bunmi Sofola
VANGUARD Sunday, August 13, 2023

It was an exclusive 50th birthday party that boasted the best foods on the menu down to exotic canapé and choice wine and champagne. However, by the time desert was served, Veronica, 36, had changed from the polite, friendly lady who had initially charmed other guests, into an insulting and aggressive loud mouth. The reason? After guzzling a few glasses of Chablis, Veronica, a beautician, who runs an impressive salon insists she wasn’t drunk – but instead, had suffered a bad physical reaction to white wine. And like a growing band of women, she has sworn off it ever since.

She said: “My recollection of the night are very hazy, thank God, because I cringe from head to toe whenever I think about it. My partner filled me in the following day, telling me I’d been rude about the views and opinions of the other guests, shouting them down and insisting mine was the only take on any given subject worth listening to. When his friends tried to chat, I was so argumentative they backed off and went to find someone more reasonable to speak to.

“Towards the end of the night, when it began to dawn on me that I’d offended all my partner’s friends, I started slobbering over them, trying to apologise. I couldn’t bear the shame of facing these people again and my partner no doubt dreaded a repeat performance. It was inevitable we broke up shortly after”.

Veronica, who’d drunk no more than three glasses of wine was adamant it was the type of alcohol that was to blame rather than the amount she imbibed. She’s not alone. It seems so many women believe white wine has a Jekyll-and-Hyde effect – turning them into argumentative and aggressive shrews even when they’ve not drunk to excess – that professionals working in the field are wondering if there might be something in white wine that does have an effect.

Sarah Turner, an addiction counsellor who offers cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling to women who believe they have a problem with drinking, has worked with hundreds of middle-class professionals. She says about a quarter claim to behave badly after small amounts of white wine, “clients tell me they get so aggressive after drinking it they have done things they wouldn’t otherwise dream of doing”, she says. “Smashing furniture, breaking windows, even driving off in a rage. I’ve even wondered if white wine could somehow be raising testosterone levels in women as the effect can be so dramatic”.

Why can’t older women flaunt their sex appeal?

By Candida 

VANGUARD Nigeria, Sunday, October 16, 2022

Some few weeks back, I wrote about how a handful of senior girls are often inappropriately dressed at parties, failing to admit glamour for them has passed its sell-by-date. A few readers were outraged by my views whilst some believed women over 50 shouldn’t ‘flash’ their boobs and legs.

“They ought to dress with the appropriate decorum befitting their age”, observed Lesly. “After the age of 50, ladies should wear clothes to the knee or just below. I am much more elegant; of a similar age and would never contemplate being seen in a ridiculously young apparel.

“What has happened to elegance and dignity? What some of these senior girls wear in the quest to hang on to their youth would not even look good on someone half their age – they’re all deluded women living in the past!”

“How sad that bruising commentary should be directed at women who dare to be different, old or young”, observed Lara, a cosmetologist. “This extraordinary flowering of prejudice that blossoms whenever older women show off their legs is notable for two things – how often it happens and the depth of hypocrisy exposed.

“While younger women with terrible legs – and I’ve seen some shocker, including 20-somethings in tiny denim shorts exposing mountainous thighs bearing glaciers of cellulite – can run around baring all without as much as a raised eyebrow, things are very different for ladies like me. Any woman who reaches her 50s, however svelte or begulling, seems to be prejudiced from even so much as flashing a knee.

COVID-19: Can Africa Afford Lockdowns?

 By Chukwuma Charles Soludo, CFR 

April 2020

This piece summarizes my contribution to an African debate. From Johannesburg to Lagos, Cairo to Dakar, Kinshasa to Kigali, Nairobi to Accra, etc the debate on how Africa should respond to the global coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is raging. At an African regional policy platform, I had expressed some of these (personal) views some weeks ago but have been encouraged by most members to circulate them in Africa beyond the platform.

This year 2020 begins a new decade that promises to be one of dreadful disruptions, with Africa holding the weakest end of the stick. In 2008/09, the global “great recession” was triggered by financial crisis in the US (world’s largest economy). Then, much of Africa was said to be decoupled from the crisis and muddled through without severe devastation of its economies. This year, a global health pandemic that has paused the global economy and certain to rail-road it into synchronized recession (if not depression) was triggered by the second largest economy, China. Unlike before, multilateralism and global coordination framework are at their weakest. National (local) self-defence is the rule. As before, the rich world with its generous welfare system and huge financial war chest, is taking care of itself (the US alone has US$2.2 trillion stimulus package). Africa is left to its fate.

Covid-19 caught the world totally unprepared, and with no proven and available medical response. Ad-hoc cocktails and learning-by-doing constitute the strategic package. In most western countries, the cocktail of response has included a coterie of defensive measures including: border closure; prepare isolation centres and mobilize medical personnel/facilities; implement “stay at home” orders or lockdowns except for food, medicine and essential services; campaign for basic hygiene and social distancing; arrange welfare packages for the vulnerable; and also economic stimulus packages to mitigate the effects on the macro economy. 

Many African countries have largely copied the above template, to varying degrees. Piece-meal extensions of “stay at home” or lockdown orders as in many western countries have also been copied in Africa. But the question is: can Africa really afford lockdowns, and can they be effective? Put differently, given the social and economic circumstances of Africa and the impending ‘economic pandemic’, can Africa successfully and sustainably defeat Covid-19 by copying the conventional trial-and-error template of the western nations? In confusion and desperation, the world seemed to be throwing any and everything at the pandemic. Recall President Trump’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine “might help”? The evidence so far (from limited sample) is that it probably actually worsens the disease. The trial and error have left huge human toll and economic ruins, and there is still no solution.

Disgusting things men do in relationships

By Epiphenia Muolokwo
VANGUARD Nigeria. Saturday, January 25, 2020

Apparently, no woman likes to be cheated on, bad morning breaths, wearing the same underwear for days, farting, over-sized ego, lies, being taken for granted, being taken advantage of etc. These are most of the things we find disgusting in relationships, but we tend to compromise or be quiet about some, just so we don't hurt your feelings.

Relationships they say, come with a lot of sacrifices from two connected individuals, who are willing to make things work. They tend to endure some things just to make the relationship work.

Being in a relationship doesn't mean you're losing yourself.

Of course, you want to stay real and genuine when you're in an intimate relationship with someone. However, you still want to do your part in putting your best foot forward. It's always important that you are presenting your best self towards your partner.

Men do a lot of disgusting things in relationships while being completely oblivious of the fact that their partners may find them quite obnoxious. Some of those disgusting things, I took my time to outline.

Morning bad breath

While some may find it romantic, especially to kiss her in the morning without brushing; many others fare not comfortable with it .

Wearing the same underwear for days

Exactly! 'Eww'! That's what I believe everyone should say too. It's completely disgusting and I strongly believe no woman likes this.

It's wrong! It's gross! We women find it disgusting! Please stop! There's no justification to this. It's only right you change your underwear EVERYDAY. That way, you save your partner the stress of continually inhaling filth and treatment of infection.

Nothing is as sexy and attractive as a clean Man.

Ego

Ego: Every human's sense of self-worth or self-importance. It's present in every human being – no doubt. However, it gets unattractive and even disgusting to women when you possess an enormously unnecessary sense of importance. You think of yourself as the best thing to ever happen to the woman on planet earth.

You rub it in the face of your partner and may even tend to demean her in the process. Some even go as far as abusing their partners over trifle faults because they think they own them. A lot of women may endure this, perhaps for her unending love for you, or for what you guys share together. Or even for any other reason whatsoever. Many women endure to keet relationship on. For whatever it is – it's wrong!

I personally find it disgusting!

Some women shared their thoughts on this topic.

Oxford English Dictionary recognises some Nigerian English words

VANGUARD HEADLINE | Posted: Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Oxford English Dictionary
My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English.

This is how acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes her relationship with English, the language which she uses in her writing, and which millions of her fellow Nigerians use in their daily communication. By taking ownership of English and using it as their own medium of expression, Nigerians have made, and are continuing to make, a unique and distinctive contribution to English as a global language. We highlight their contributions in this month's update of the Oxford English Dictionary, as a number of Nigerian English words make it into the dictionary for the first time.

The majority of these new additions are either borrowings from Nigerian languages or unique Nigerian coinages that have only begun to be used in English in the second half of the twentieth century, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s.

One particularly interesting set of such loanwords and coinages has to do with Nigerian street food. The word buka, borrowed from Hausa and Yoruba and first attested in 1972, refers to a roadside restaurant or street stall that sells local fare at low prices. Another term for such eating places first evidenced in 1980 is bukateria, which adds to buka the -teria ending from the word cafeteria. An even more creative synonym is mama put, from 1979, which comes from the way that customers usually order food in a buka: they say 'Mama, put...' to the woman running the stall, and indicate the dish they want. The word later became a generic name for the female food vendors themselves-Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka notably includes a Mama Put character in one of his works.

The informal transport systems that emerged in Nigeria's huge, densely populated cities have also necessitated lexical invention. Danfo, a borrowing from Yoruba whose earliest use in written English is dated 1973, denotes those yellow minibuses whizzing paying passengers through the busy streets of Lagos, the country's largest city. Okada, on the other hand, is first attested twenty years later, and is the term for a motorcycle that passengers can use as a taxi service. It is a reference to Okada Air, an airline that operated in Nigeria from 1983 to 1997, and its reputation as a fast yet potentially dangerous form of transport, just like the motorcycle taxi.

A few of the Nigerian words in this update were created by shortening existing English words. One example is the adjective guber (earliest quotation dated 1989), which is short for 'gubernatorial'-so Nigerians, for instance, would call a person running for governor a 'guber candidate'. Another frequently used clipping with a longer history in English is agric. It was originally used in American English around 1812 as a graphic abbreviation for the adjective agricultural, but is now used chiefly in this sense in West Africa. In the early 1990s, agric began to be used in Nigeria to designate improved or genetically modified varieties of crops or breeds of livestock, especially a type of commercially reared chicken that is frequently contrasted with 'native' (i.e. traditionally reared) chicken. Two decades later, Nigerian students also started to use the word as a noun meaning agricultural science as an academic subject or course.