PAY FI DI BATTEY MEK YUH SELL OFF?

IT is often said that men are visual beings and it is this infatuation with the outward appearance that has led some to make some rather offensive requests of the women in their lives.

The requests, while seemingly reasonable on the part of the males, have left some women scarred or have forced others to spend thousands of dollars trying to fit an image that they are probably not too eager to fit.

 

Many women go under the knife to please their mates. In this photo, a woman in Colombia — one of the leading countries worldwide for plastic surgery — gets prepped for cosmetic surgery. (Photo: AP) 1/1

Twenty-six-year-old Myzanne Wallace has still not got over a move by her ex-boyfriend to fatten her up while they were dating back in high school. Both of them had grown up together, but he migrated when she was 11 years old. The two reconnected online and after months of rebuilding their relationship, he decided to pay her a visit.

“When he came back, he was saying I didn’t change because I was slim. He said I needed to put on weight,” she said.

She said she didn’t take his proddings seriously until he brought her a bottle of pills on his next visit which he asked her to take so she could gain some weight.

“First when he was talking about it, I thought he was joking, but when he brought the pills, that’s when I got upset and I asked him why he wanted me to change,” said a still upset Wallace, whose relationship with the young man came to a quick end.

“It’s like they don’t appreciate you for who you are or how you look and that just makes you more conscious,” she argued.

Donnette Blair remembers the put down from the man she had a crush on in college, who when approached with the confession of her crush, gave her a once over then declared, “you’d be cuter with a bigger butt”.

“And like a fool, I started researching ways to get my buttocks bigger so I could please him,” she said.

She said she tried everything from exercise to detachable buttocks enhancers bought off the Internet, but she never seemed to be able to please him.

“Then one day something inside me snapped, and I realised how idiotic my actions had been,” she said.

Counselling psychologist Lola Allen-Jones said some men have even threatened to leave their spouses if they refuse to change, like to go back to the more modelesque image of their pre-pregnancy days or fit the image of the poster on their office walls.

“They (men) will say ‘look at so and so’ or somebody else they know. It might be a mutual friend, someone in the family, or maybe they’ll be driving along the road and see another woman,” said the psychologist, who cautioned men to be more considerate of their spouse’s feelings.

“In order to help someone make changes, you first have to affirm them. It is always best to start with affirmation, because by nature, especially with things like that, women tend to be very sensitive,” she said.

“Find a nice way of saying ‘I love the way you have looked over the years and I know you have had the kids, but do you think it would help if you did some exercise especially now that you are getting on in age’. Find a way, but start with affirmation, don’t just attack,” said Allen-Jones.

She agreed that there are some things that are in a person’s best interest which their spouse might choose to point out, but believes that one partner ought to be tactful in pointing out the flaws of another.

She said many relationships have ended because the couples are unable to accept how each other looks.

Meanwhile, plastic surgeon Dr Kemel Gajraj said women have been spending lots of cash to improve themselves to suit their partner’s physical tastes.

“They make liposuction requests because they do want to look good for their spouses. We have people who want to have their breasts lifted as opposed to [having them] hanging down; some of them have small breasts and they want to have big breasts; and some breasts are too big and they want it small,” he said.

He said most of the women are encouraged by their spouses to make the alterations, while some do it because they fear losing their men to other women.

“The men might be hinting at other women and how beautiful they look and the spouses want to look like those women,” Gajraj said.