Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2025 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Nneoma Kenure‘s “The Weight of Our Bodies” is the runner up. 

Award Founder’s Note: The runner up for the 2025 Abebi Award in AfroNonfiction is an articulate and piercing foray into “The Weight of Our Bodies”; the heft of the female form and its twisted relationship with objectification, even by we who inhabit the body. With deft and a thorough gaze, the writer explores girlhood; the externalities and interiorities of growing up in bodies that are frequently observed, commented upon and subjected to endless modification. In the end, only our own eyes can truly see us, and we can train them in ways that honour us, and let us be. 

My chest heaves in warning; it is time to get off the treadmill. I have pushed way past my  limit, egged on by the memory of last night’s intimate rendezvous with fufu and ofe akwu. I dealt with the food, and in turn, this torture machine must deal with all the  calories just as diligently. My hour-long run is up, and in victory that looks very much like  defeat, I fold my limp and moist torso over the handlebars, panting noisily. Many years  ago, I swore I would never count calories because savouring delicacies was too  important to involve myself in such inanities. However, that was when I could put bales  of food away, and my body ignored the intrusion with disdain. But after being split open  twice to birth babies, I am now consumed by the drive to build and then maintain a  svelte body. 

I feel a finger gently poke my sides. I peer out of one eye, the one not inundated by  gliding sweat and see the legs of a lady. Without looking up, I pull off my AirPods and  hear her ask. 

“Are you done with this, please?”

Still panting and without looking at her, I pick myself off the handlebars, wipe down the  machine with antibacterial wipes and wave her on. 

I turn around to face the gym, and I am instantly confronted by a charge in the  atmosphere. I have felt it before, this electricity. But I am perplexed by its presence here.  What has changed the tenor in my gym so suddenly? Why is it so quiet? My disloyal treadmill begins to whirl for its new occupant, and I turn around to look at  her properly. 

Her gait is calculated. 

They – and now, I too – are all watching her, and she knows it. 

She knows it because people have always watched her. Looking, leering, measuring,  projecting, fantasising. She does not bother about it. She is used to it. 

I walk to the squat rack, wondering what it must feel like to be scrutinised like this, to  have this energy be a pulsing shadow. I understand immediately that there would be no  breaks for her. That with that body, this was constant. I decide I will take no part in  making her a spectacle, that I will pay her no mind. But between sets and recumbent, I  watch her, intrigued by the silence that has overtaken the gym. 

Why had I interpreted her strut as a performance? She was just walking. What does it  feel like to wake up to a body that prescribes a role and to have to play it? I am overwhelmed by the urge to ask her, but I wouldn’t dare. I consider her outfit; her  workout clothes flash large designer logos, and if style is self-expression, she, at the very least, welcomed being looked at. Or she has given in to the inevitable. I wonder  what age this began for her, when she became her body and was not afforded the  privilege of being anything else by onlookers. 

The first time I was reduced to a spectacle, I was about twelve years old. My friend had  decided she would have a party to celebrate turning thirteen. It had not occurred to me  to embellish myself for the day. So, when I walked into the living room in my signature  denim shorts and t-shirt, it was clear I had failed to understand how grown-up we were expected to proclaim ourselves for the fete. I dashed back home, mentally scanning my  wardrobe. I had nothing fancy to wear. I was soon almost in tears. My sister, Thea, doused my rising hysteria, offering me something from her wardrobe. I wore the dress  hurriedly and ran back as best I could in my fancier and decidedly less running-friendly  pumps. The party had ballooned in number, the living room filled up with dancing  guests, most of them kids from the neighbourhood. Chaka Demus and Pliers were blasting from the speakers. 

Tease me, tease me, tease me, tease me, babe 

Till I lose control. 

I loved the song and could not wait to dance to it. But something was wrong. Why was  everyone staring at me? It felt like a strobe was aimed directly at my body, compelling  everyone to see me in an unfamiliar light. I took refuge in my friend’s bedroom, where I  caught an image of myself in a mirror. It was the dress. It was a white dress of some  jersey material with a lot of ruching. My relatively new breasts, contoured by the clingy  material, were highlighted delicately. Thea was in her twenties, so it was a proper adult  dress, and I was a 12-year-old child. Except I put on this white dress, and I wasn’t a child anymore. I backed the mirror to look at my behind and was rewarded with a lie. When I  was born, our landlady, Mrs Omowa, told my mother that when she bathed me, she  ought to mould my bumbum, an age-old practice of shaping the behind of baby girls  birth, so that I would have Yoruba bumbum. My mother had no idea what Mrs Omowa  meant, so the landlady came downstairs every morning to knead my butt. I don’t know  what Mrs Omowa did, but considering my younger sisters called me an empty and,  consequently, flat wallet, I could never lay claim to the hint of a butt. Only after birthing two children, then lifting heavy in the gym, have I finally crafted the semblance of a  protruding derriere for myself. But that day, at that party, and in that dress, I learnt that  some adjustments could prop and allude to the bounty of body parts in almost  confrontational ways. 

My friends urged me to return to the party, insisting that I looked good, but I remained on  the bed, wondering why looking good electrified the air. I did not have the bandwidth to analyse why this electricity terrified me. I was soon persuaded and walked back into the  party, but it happened again. People did not look at me and then away like they had  done all my life. It was too much. I didn’t even know what it was, but it was too much for  me. A couple of guys wanted to dance with me. I’d known them all my life. We’d barely ever said hello to each other; now they were beside themselves, frothing with  excitement. I couldn’t move. I took my new body away, hiding it at the kitchen sink,  pretending I didn’t mind washing up cutlery and glass cups, while the teenage who-is who of the intimate neighbourhood gyrated in the living room. I attempted to slide back  into the party once more, but I realised I had lost the invisibility I had not known was a  gift. I ran back home. 

***

I look at the lady still trudging on the treadmill. Even her tired walk is designed to  ‘bewitch’ men. Is this her body moving naturally? This was not a dress she could shed at  her convenience. She had no choice in the matter. The memory of being reduced to a  body that her presence has unlocked weighs on my mind. Society insists on binaries for  women, like Peggy Olsen and Joan Holloway of Mad Men. As much as Joan was ‘the  body’, Peggy was still objectified. There is no escape for any of us. Shrouded, prepubescent, exhibitionistic, or even well past our prime, we are all targets. Some of us  enjoy some invisibility, but did being invisible save me or Peggy from predatory men? To  the devious, the invisible is a blind spot, a blurred bull’s-eye, and therefore vulnerable. When Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell walk into the dining room in Gentlemen Prefer  Blondes, they own the room, revelling in the power of their sexuality. I did not bother to  analyse why I and others like me cower from this aura, why it didn’t feel empowering. Now in a gym subjugated by this lady’s body, I must consider the downside of this  power, the burden of being objectified. This musing evokes the once insignificant  memory of another girl. 

Tiwa was one of the most popular girls in my secondary school – entirely for her body.  She won social awards like Miss Shape or Miss Sexy. I was proclaimed Miss Legs once, but the title did not stick and by the next social event, a new leggy queen was hailed. In  our last week of school, on a sunny Saturday by the tuck shop, Tiwa suddenly looked up  at me and said she would do anything to have my body, something I did not understand  at the time. I was a skinny, flat-chested, no-ass-having teenager in Lagos, Nigeria. Skinny girls were nowhere near the mesial of the social order, with teenage boys too  uncerebral for bones. So, when a popular girl said this, it made no sense. I saw  immediately though that she meant it. I didn’t understand the melancholic longing in  her eyes. Only now do I see and can articulate the invisibility I had that she recognised  as a power, a freedom she will probably never have. At that age, I could not consider the  social and psychological cost of being a body. How difficult it must be to question which  relationships are shaped by perception rather than authenticity.

While Tiwa yearned for a different kind of power, hers to command attention, and the  advantages of her desirability were apparent to the rest of us. I assumed she enjoyed it. But what determines desirability? Ideals are different across time and space. When I  schooled in Owerri, the girls with hairy legs were considered sexy, but when I changed secondary schools and returned to cosmopolitan Lagos, girls were expected to be  clean-shaven. How do societies determine what is desirable? 

After secondary school, while walking down a street in Akowonjo with a male friend, we walked past a mechanic shop with greasy men about. One of the men called out, ‘Omoge lepa sisi’, and another yelled, ‘Agbani Darego’. My friend asked what it felt like to  be praised loudly for my looks. I didn’t tell him that barely two days ago, those same  men had jeered at me as I walked past, calling me lepa. Just lepa. They had meant it in  ‘no nice way’. The only thing that had changed in the past two days was that Agbani  Darego had been crowned Miss World. ‘Lepa’ was suddenly no longer a slur. There was  a seismic and sudden shift in the beauty ideals that cascaded from the international  stage all the way to the streets of Akowonjo. The first black Miss World meant the parameters of beauty standards in Nigeria were immediately expanded to include the  Western ideal of a lithe figure. Bodies like mine, the skinny and angular, were set to have  their time on the African stage. Western media had declared what it thought of as  beautiful, and almost in real time, I saw its power to determine what is valued or  excluded, and how ideals, preferences, and cultures are shaped in a global world. 

***

While stretching, I think back to all the years I was the jeans and tee girl because they  released me from the restrictions of the feminine form – all the ‘sit like a lady’, the ‘you  can’t climb a tree in that dress’, the ‘I can see your thighs’, as if female thighs are symbolic of the monstrous feminine, like Medusa’s gaze, with the power to strike down  the unfortunates who look upon them. I had internalised these lessons, and it  accounted for my fear as a twelve-year-old at a party. As I grew into adulthood, jeans  remained emblematic of the freedom to be unfettered, to be quasi-asexual. I  understand this place, my somewhat safe place, but this lady on the treadmill has  forced me to consider what it might mean to be forever conspicuous. Am I  overestimating the burden of being a spectacle? I know it can also be a heady feeling  because, over the years, I have become confident in performing femininity, even expressing sexuality. I appreciate having the power to call attention to my body when I  want to, to retreat as soon as I am done, rising from the cinders of everyday living, being  the belle of the ball at my discretion.  

Once, at a house party, a petite lady called Sylvia was inebriated. Our hostess seized Silvia’s car keys and forced her to her bedroom. With Sylvia gone, the men talked about her; the power she wielded once upon a time. Silvia would walk into rooms, it didn’t  matter who else was in there, her body cast a beguiling spell that few men could ignore.  The measure of her power was that she had been associated with all the big names of  the early 2000s, regularly appearing in societal gossip columns. I was surprised to hear  this, as there was nothing about the lady, as far as I had seen, that would suggest this  aura. The phrase ‘banging body’ was bandied about by those who had known her in her  heyday. I was struck by the sense of loss that the men who lusted after old Silvia  seemed to be expressing. I wondered what this absence must feel like for Sylvia, who  enjoyed a ‘power’ that must have been intoxicating. The mechanics, chemistry, and  semiotics of desirability remain a paradoxical paradigm. I am reminded of the terrible  literature teacher in secondary school who, while teaching Marlowe’s She Stoops to Conquer, explained to us that real feminine power lay in submission, and I wondered why for women, power is always subversive, paradoxical, or even sly, but never concrete. Years later, I cheered when Cersei Lannister gave Little Finger that masterclass in power; only power is power, and few women have ever had it. Age comes for us all, ravaging the once ravishing and in its wake is the invisibility that time bestows  on all women. For some, it is devastating, for others, it can be a relief. I would have liked  to see Sylvia in her glory, mainly because I’ve never witnessed that magnetic pull in  someone so small. 

***

The lady on the treadmill is still walking, and the gym is still mute. I pack up my gym bag  and begin the long walk home. We all suffer the same restrictions, all of us confined to  our forms. The way I look has informed the way I’ve been treated by many, how I’ve  experienced the world and, in turn, what I think about myself and the world at large. Our  responses and esteem within our confines may differ, influenced by our families,  religion, culture, and the media. For many, there is a disconnection between how they  are seen and who they want to be. Temi of Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow comes  to mind. The character and her sister, Ladun, are clear examples of the subjectivities of  the objectified and the obscured. While all women, big and small, are sexualised, it  goes without saying that bigger women bear the brunt of this gaze. With the advent of  visual social media, it has been interesting to watch (younger) women own and display  their sexuality. Women’s bodies have always been a leverageable capital, bartered by  men to other men. Now, it is self-curated, and social media cuts out the (middle) man.  Humans have also always categorised bodies into aesthetic hierarchies, from benign  conversations about beautiful babies, social awards in secondary schools, to the commodification of bodies at beauty pageants. Regardless of one’s position on the  spectrum, the constant display is insidious. The psychological impact on young girls is  understandable, leading many to negotiate their identities by pursuing modifications.  The BBL craze reached the shores of Nigeria years ago, and I learn that many women desire exaggerated silhouettes, offering themselves as spectacles, and that they must,  in turn, derive pleasure from being looked at. The recent medical intervention of losing  weight via semaglutides highlights the pressures to conform to other ideals, or, as I now  must consider, because they deserve a break from overt sexualisation. While curvy and  skinny body types may point to cultural divides, the BBL- Ozempic dichotomy is no  chasm but an extension and mirror of the push-pull between culture and media over women’s bodies. The constant self-objectification that governs contemporary young  lives, regardless of body type, is now the norm. If our bodies dictate who we are, how do  sudden changes, such as pregnancy, taking Ozempic, getting a BBL, a disability or a Mummy Makeover, disrupt our identities? I think back to my struggle with my  postpartum form and my subsequent intense relationship with the gym. 

I am almost home. All I have worked out for myself is that I am just as guilty as everyone  else who has done a little something to tweak the outside to fit how they are perceived.  In falling in love with working out, I have given birth to a new me. A me who preens about  what her body can do (and what it looks like). Time will coyly leave her mark no matter  my efforts, and I must be ready to play the role my body dictates. I understand that  when I was told to hide my legs, my thighs, my body, it was other women’s way of trying  to protect me because they knew that Medusa was the prey.

I push open the gate and walk through the house into the kitchen. I never eat before 1  pm, and it is only a little past 9 am. Still, I put a kettle on, preparing to do right by the  leftover ofe-akwu and fufu. I could pretend that my introspection has eased the  constraints I have placed on my body to conform, but I have no plans to soften my stern  relationship with the gym and food permanently. 

Nothing will change.

About the Author:

N.F. Kenure writes fiction and nonfiction exploring the culture and media that shape the lives of Nigerian women. She was shortlisted for the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri Prize for Life Writing and won The Republic’s Best Gender Essay in 2024. She is querying Pregnancy Sucks! (Perhaps You Should Too), a tongue-in-cheek memoir, and is at work on her first novel, Daughter of a Nobody.

*Feature image by Maxine yang on Unsplash