A good friend sent me a link to the page Southerly’s ‘100 Ways to be Elegant (Without Depending on a Label)’. Underneath she scribbled, “Reading this and it’s so you! …Like, I could hear you telling me these things!”  I like the list and she was right, some of the items on the list I have certainly heard myself say. For instance, number 24: Remember birthdays (It always boggles me how this simple act surprises and delights people).

The more I read down the list on Southerly, the more I began to frame my own idea of elegance in my mind. My research led to the conclusion that as a world, we equate elegance with wealth, sophistication and for women, calm and gentleness. The realization made my friend’s compliment even more flattering to me because well, I’m more one to laugh long and loud, to gesticulate wildly and to cry, well…to cry like an African really. Like THIS basically. (I’m dramatic). Seems like to most people, an elegant woman is one who is very cautious of her environment,  never raises her voice in public, reduces her laughter to a soft ‘harmonious’ (no lie, one web site really said this) giggle, and is never seen upset.

Ok, so that’s Rosie the Robot. Not me…and certainly not many of my African sisters.

These authors have clearly never been present in the middle of Nigerian women indulging in sweet gist. The laughter is plentiful and its tinkling melody is strangely harmonious even in its cacophony. There is no one type of woman. Poise and class are not found in wearing pearls and sleek chignons and to put these robotic standards on women is laughable. The root word for elegance is ‘Selective’, and selective is what I think women ought to be. Selective does not mean snobbish, selective means not attending every fight you are invited to, nor indulging every whim, sharing every thought or gracing everyone with your presence. Because you understand your worth, you can be selective.

So I put together my list of what I think elegance is- including a few tips from the article that started all this-, some really great tips from a very cool site called Elegant Woman…and a lot of lessons from my mother who I really think is the epitome of elegance. So here you go, ‘Wendelyn’s Questionable Advice on Being Elegant’. Lol.

• Be Lovely

“Ultimately being lovely comes when one is inspired by the love of people, which comes supernaturally from God.”

 –Eunice, http://www.elegantwoman.org

For me, elegance cannot exist without a good measure of loveliness. By loveliness I mean having kindness and showing empathy. Caring about people, being interested in them, lends you a warmth that draws others. I think this softens and gentles a person, adding that polish, grace and an inexplicable charisma some people just seem to exude. Speaking of the inexplicable, one of THE best compliments I’ve ever gotten came from a very old man who once attempted to describe what he termed as my ‘aura’. After looking at me intently for a few seconds, as though trying to seize wandering letters to form sense, he said, “It is ‘Ebubedike’”. ‘Ebubedike’ in his beautiful, nuanced Igbo refers to the “Inexplicable glory or presence that surrounds royalty”. I was feeling myself like I lost my keys the rest of that day let me tell you! Lol.

So genuinely caring about people, for me, is the heart of true elegance.

• Thoughtfulness

“Elegance is not about being noticed, it’s about being remembered.”

-Giorgio Armani

An elegant person has a deep respect of others and things around. To be elegant is to have a reverence for other people’s time, their space and their things. It means being dependable. I struggle with going late…for everything. I think sometimes that perhaps if I actually respect the time that people have invested to meet with me or host me, I would perhaps make more of an effort to arrive early.

Even with work, I am trying to learn to spend the company’s money even more carefully than I spend mine, to not try to capitalize on situations, to leave places more pleasant because I have been there. Elegance is found even in small things like returning things in the same or even better condition than you borrowed them. Something I have so far never been able to do (2016 New Year resolutions).

Something that really really irritates me about Nigeria is the absolute lack of thoughtfulness for others on the roads, in homes, at schools, everywhere. On Fridays for instance, I find my sleep disturbed by a church next door insistent on broadcasting sermons from their all-night vigil service, through megaphones with the capacity to keep the whole neighbourhood awake through the night. It is little wonder therefore that non-Christians can joke, “Jesus save me…from your followers!” How are we showing Christ’s love by such rampant inconsideration for others, after all how can you profess to love God who you cannot see if you can’t love the people you can. (1 John 4:20).

• Own your Power

“Power is like being a lady…if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

-Margaret Thatcher

Elegance is power. And Power is simply confidence in action. Confidence does not necessarily mean strutting into a room and promoting silence that’s being a boss b*tch. I mean this IS a good thing, but elegance doesn’t mean demanding attention, because if you have to demand it to get it….you probably don’t deserve it. The mistake a lot of people make is in thinking that confidence comes from having, from owning, not from being. You can’t buy, borrow, steal confidence.

So how can you get confidence? By knowing yourself.

If you really understand yourself, own your weaknesses, know your strengths, there is not much that anyone can tell you about yourself or a situation that’d frighten you or make you feel inferiror.

Another trick to building confidence is focusing on others. I went for a wedding recently and a friend of  mine asked me, “Why do I keep seeing you in corners whispering intensely with people?” Lol. I love people. I’m  so curious about them, what drives them, how they reason, what they love. I get so lost in listening and learning that I’m not spending so much time worried about myself and how I come off or look. People like to talk about themselves, allow them.

• Be Joyful

“It is big-hearted to be the one who smiles first because it takes a certain type of admirable courage and lack of self-consciousness.[A woman who smiles first] also has positivity that a smile will be returned. Her smile encourages other smiles.”

-Eunice, http://www.elegantwoman.org

I love happy women, they’re the prettiest in my eyes and certainly the most elegant. It’s not easy to love life, this living thing is tough. But there’s something I tend to do, and I don’t even know where I learnt it, but I always determine to enjoy the place in life I’m in. My general motto is, “I might as well!” and I think what I tend to do is to find the things in life that I CAN do at that time. People often ask how I have so many hobbies, it’s because I learnt them at times in my life where I could have been complaining. So if for instance I had to move to a horrid little state where I didn’t have any friends or worked a job I hated…I’d probably find a hobby I’ve always wanted to learn, and spend my free time developing it. I am very conscious of how transient life is and so I know what Nigerians often say, “No condition is permanent” is true. That’s actually sort of how I discovered I can draw.

So how does this affect elegance? If you’re joyful from the inside, it’s a lot easier to be a lot of the other things I’ve stated above. Joy makes being kind to others, showing thoughtfulness and being confident, easier

We underestimate how important joy is because we often attach it to what we do or don’t have. But joy is an intangible feeling that owes itself to nothing but our choice.

• Grace

I’m not using the words graceful or graciousness here to mean having nice manners., I use these words to refer to the intent behind the nice manners. A lot of elite society people with the best manners are also able to be intensely catty and unkind. But being gracious means not only seeing the best in people, but rooting for others to win. One of the reasons I love my girlfriends, is that I see how honestly the girls I call friends root for my success. They celebrate my wins as though my victories are theirs. I won’t even talk about my family, I mean when I win, I have to remind them that it’s MY win, just to be clear, the way they’ll celebrate like it’s for them. Lol.

But it takes a certain measure of grace to do that. To treat everyone with the same generosity of spirit, to have a spirit that is gentled by love for others. That is true elegance to me.

I like this quote from The Elegant Woman site,” When an elegant woman is complimented, she accepts it kindly but gives away the credit, praising someone who has helped her ”. She doesn’t necessarilty give the credit away, she’s just generous in spirit enough to spread the credit around, understanding that sometimes the very deserving do not receive the thanks they deserve.

In conclusion, I think my definition of elegance differs a lot from what the world teaches because for me elegance like beauty, and all truly important things, comes from within us. See some more thoughts on elegance in my next post…