KATE HALIM
Vivian Ekpo is 35-year-old. She has beautiful skin as smooth as silk. Her smile lights up her well rounded face exposing a set of white teeth. Standing at five feet, six inches, she is by all ramifications an attractive woman.
But Ekpo has a challenge. She has wide hips, and big buttocks that make men stop and turn to look at her backside whenever they see her. She doesn’t like walking alone especially when there are group of boys around.
Catcalls and sexual harassments for a businesswoman
She hates the catcalls and sexual remarks they make whenever they see her hips. It makes her uncomfortable to the extent that she loathes going to Lagos markets. This is because the guys sometimes start touching her buttocks.
Ekpo is a small-scale business woman. She cooks and delivers her foods to her customers at home or office. Cooking allows her to interact with persons from diverse backgrounds on a daily basis.
Although she operates from the Ketu area of Lagos, she constantly moves to different parts of the city to deliver her well, home cooked meals to her growing customers.
According to Ekpo, “I feel very uncomfortable with the stares I get from people, especially men whenever I am walking on the road.”
“Once I emerge, people look at me as if something is wrong with me. Some men, even follow me about just to feed their eyes the more. They also make insensitive remarks about my buttocks. It is a big problem for me,” she confessed.
Endowed with big buttocks, Ekpo’s perceived assets are increasingly proving to be one of her biggest problems as she struggles to make a living for herself. Even some of her female friends sometimes throw jabs at her big buttocks by asking her why she is so selfish to gather what would be enough for three women.
“Sometimes I feel as if I had committed a crime by having large buttocks,” she said with a deep sigh. “There is nowhere I go that people don’t make me feel uncomfortable with their stares. I have had to cancel some outings because I want to save myself the stress of being stared at by different people,” Ekpo told Saturday Sun.
On several occasions, the businesswoman has had to take a cab to certain places just to avoid being harassed by men because of her backside.
Apart from the kind of looks she gets from men and women alike, the disturbance she gets from men asking her out is enough for her to remain permanently indoors. Some even tell her to stop wasting the endowment God gave her by “pretending to be a virgin.” They tell her upfront that they want to feel her buttocks.
“I find it hard to cope with the different names men call me as a result of my big bum,” she said. “Many of them promise me gifts, money, phone, vacations just to be close to me but because I know they are only lusting after my body, I don’t pay attention to them.”
Nightmare for a woman with big boobs
Thirty-year-old Oluwakemi Olawuyi is blessed with extra large boobs. Aside the stares she gets from men with occasional licking of their lips, finding the right size of bra is one big challenge that she deals with all the time.
“It’s a big challenge for me because a lot of times I have had to travel abroad to source for the right size of bras which can hold my breasts firmly in place and not cause me back pain, but they can be very expensive,” she lamented.
“While other women can buy their bras for around N5, 000 to N10, 000, I’ll have to spend as much as N25, 000 to get one right bra. In the past, I visit ‘bend down boutiques’ on several occasions to buy bras because I couldn’t find my size in shops that stock new items. After buying such, I would soak them in hot water and wash before wearing.”
However, nowadays that she has made money from working as a top manager in a consulting firm, Olawuyi travels abroad whenever she needs new sets of bras, to get good ones. It helps her also limit the number of times she visits the market to shop for new bras.
“It is not as if there are no locally-made ones, the truth is that they can’t last more than two weeks for people like us,” she revealed. “This is one of the areas we can say having big breasts can be a source of concern at times.”
Embarrassing body rubbing from a total stranger
Deborah Babatunde is a fresh graduate from the University of Lagos, Akoka, where she studied English. Babatunde admitted that having a massive behind has attracted all sorts of attention to her. Even though she tries to be positive about the situation, she noted that the stares she gets from men, sometimes scares her.
“When it comes to my body, it has not been easy with the advances I get from men because of my massive bum,” she admitted. “I cringe whenever I think about what would happen to me if I were stranded at night with men around. Some people say I have a killer figure but I see it as mixed blessings.
Babatunde recalls what happened to her one day in the popular Yaba market where she went to get some tops and jeans. Shrugging her shoulders as if to shake off the memory of that horrible day from her mind, she said it was one of the worst days of her life.
“I was in the market looking for jeans when someone suddenly grabbed my buttocks from behind and started grinding his groin against my backside,” she recalled. “I tried to push him away but he was stronger than I was and I bent over and punched his balls. That was when he left me alone and began to writhe in pain.”
The most heartbreaking aspect of it she said, was that the people around when that happened didn’t do anything to stop it. They were enjoying the free show. They were laughing and hailing the guy for assaulting her. Even the market women were laughing at the sight.
“I felt violated. I was heartbroken that some people thought it was funny that a stranger felt he had the right to touch me because of my backside. Hot tears ran down my face and I left the market without buying everything I needed. And the boys were still jeering at me while I was walking away.”
Making men drool with her body shape
Celestina Okereke makes men drool, with her body shape. Standing at six feet tall and blessed with well-rounded boobs and big buttocks, she has endured all sorts of lecherous attentions from men of all ages for as long as she can remember. Her job as an advert executive of a publishing company doesn’t make her burden of having large behind easy. This is because she has to deal with men a lot in the course of her job.
The 37-year-old woman who lives in Lagos has lived the better part of her adult life asking God why He blessed her with a big bum that has been a mixture of blessing and problem for her at the same time.
“I cannot count how many times I have had to shift certain appointments to like 7:00pm just because I want the night to at least shield me from preying eyes,” she said. “At 37 and after two children, it has not been easy moving about with the type of bum God gave me because once some men sight me, they don’t take their eyes off my behind.”
Okereke doesn’t own a car yet and can’t afford to take cabs to all the places that she needs to go. The worst part is that sometimes commercial motorcyclists refuse to carry her as a result of her bum. So, she is forced to walk short distances even when it is not convenient for her given the cat-calling, annoying questions and whistling that accompanies her whenever she walks on the road.
“I am consoled by the fact that some of the guys who came close to me because they want to enjoy my buttocks as they put it have become my friends. Some of them have assisted me after I diverted their attention away from my bum and developed friendship with them,” she told Saturday Sun.
Big boobs versus undersize bras
Aitekere Erabor is not a happy woman. The 26-year-old mother of one is tired of buying bras because of her big boobs. Aside the uncomfortable stares she gets from men, having to look for quality, durable bras remains one of her greatest challenges.
“My bras don’t last more than three months. It’s tiring having to buy half a dozen bras or more because I don’t want to go to market soon. The way men look at me in the market whenever I go to buy bras leave me embarrassed,” she said.
As a fitness addict, Erabor says she experiences lots of stares from guys in the gym. Whenever she gets to the gym, everywhere will suddenly fall quiet and she will feel eyes following her as she stretches and gets ready for her daily exercises.
The guys in the gym like watching her stretch. They follow the movement of her large breasts and giggle sometimes. They are more than willing to talk to her so that they can fix their gaze on her chest. Even though some of them appear friendly, majority of them just love staring at her huge ‘melons’.
“I know my 38EE cups are a spectacular sight,” she confessed. “It was one of the things that attracted my husband to me in the first place. I feel embarrassed sometimes when guys stare at my boobs at the gym.”
While being stared at is bad, she said she will not forget in a hurry the most embarrassing day of her life in the gym. What happened that day made her to avoid the gym for a month because she wanted people to forget about the incidence for a while.
“I was stretching as usual and bended my back and thrust my chest forward,” she recalled “The weight of my breasts took a toll on my bra as the straps completely snapped. My breasts then hung down my chest with my nipples resting near my navel. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me but it was impossible. I ran to the female restroom and remained there for over an hour because of shame,” she added.