An Elegant Stallion is a judge on one of the singing talent
shows currently airing on TV stations across Nigeria.
This Elegant Stallion is a woman.
How did she morph into a stallion?
By singing.
Mystifying, not so?
Well, whenever I come across articles describing this lovely
singer, an icon in Nigeria, as an “Elegant Stallion”, I want to do something
unholy. It annoys me. I cannot abide it.
I have always wondered who came up with the soubriquet. And,
to what end, to capture her essence in a few words, her stage persona, her
distinctive voice or her innate elegance? All well and good. However, a stallion
in no way captures these attributes (never mind its elegance), except perhaps
for someone with no sense of imagination. I am surprised that the woman thus
described did not balk when she first came across this bizarre epithet. I would
like to think that she did. Then probably shrugged and got on with life, considering
it not too important to lose sleep over. Well, ma, I am not shrugging it off
any longer. It is important, too
important, for me to ignore.
A stallion is a fully-grown
male horse, one used for breeding. Why anyone would think to describe a woman
as one is dumbfounding. One wonders what
went on in the giver’s mind as he (it has to be a he) conceived the name. More
importantly, why has it been picked up and repeatedly used by entertainment
writers/ journalists who should know better? Are they clueless as well?
Like a child used to seeing monsters depicted in frightening
images in cartoons and comics, and believing them to be exactly as shown, it
does crazy things to my mind to hear her described as a stallion. To the
informed and creative, especially someone with an active imagination, it
connotes something unsavoury. Imagine
for instance, that a Westerner is reading about her for the first time and
comes across the opening line describing her as an “Elegant Stallion”. What do
you think would be the first thing to pop into the person’s mind? He would
probably think there is a back-story to it. The kind that doesn’t engender
admiration. If anyone wants to use the horse metaphor, might I suggest,
“Graceful mare?” However, this also
fails, I believe. While horses are graceful in motion, they do not make
beautiful sounds; they neigh, to put it succinctly. It is just absurd to liken
any singer to a horse.
The singer by the way is Ms. Onyeka Onwenu. A graceful, elegant, and beloved singer. Not a
stallion. Not a mare. Not a horse.
