Mum and aunt have decided to focus their energies on me. This can't be good, I mutter to myself as I pass by them. They are seated at the dining table, discussing the latest scandalous behaviour spanning their two expansive family trees, when I happen to pass by. Conversation trails off as they examine my slovenly gait and mentally tsk tsk to themselves. On one otherwise normal day, aunt is talking and, as I slouch past, she does a double take.

Having recovered from the apparent shock of my complexion, she explains to me that I have gotten far too dark for my own good, whatever this means, and I must be thrown into a vat of bleach or some other such "beauty treatment" must be applied immediately to correct this or I shall never get married. I fail to see the dire threat in the last bit and mutter noncommitedly as I walk away. Apparently my lack of fair and lovely-ness has given my mother and aunt a new mission in life: gorification! Only someone who is about to be married and has to be prepped can begin to comprehend the horror of such a process. In essence, as many layers as possible of skin that has been tanned must come off, one way or another, to reveal the lighter skin underneath. Understandably, I'm not very enthusiastic about the idea of having layers of skin come off since I posess enough of an imagination to know how exactly such results could be achieved. At the end of it all, and with no real improvements that I can see, I can only envy men and the "tall, dark and handsome" description they are stuck with instead of "ismart, gori and subservient", which is what the women get stuck with.