The information age has fooled us.
We never really got informed about anything.
We have only become meaner and less creative, with a fetish for fleeting pleasure.
We have made a religion of things that are ephemeral—especially how we look on social media and the comments and likes our images garner.
In the process, we have created a beautiful world in the digital space, but an ugly place on earth.
This is the world Zambian lawyer Naomi Pilula lived in when she posted her photos on Facebook, after enduring a barrage of legalese in the courtroom.
She was not looking forward to pretentious nods of acceptance, digital likes, or emojis of love. She just wanted to celebrate herself on the slice of digital space allocated to her by Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
Everybody does it; even thieves flaunt their wares.
Inflated buttocks, deflated brains
Suddenly, social media pounced on the innocent lawyer, ready to lynch and bury her alive, because she did not satisfy their expectations of what is beautiful.
They didn’t care what she does for a living or whether her landlord had given her a quit notice.
The adjectives were tellingly revealing: ugly, very very ugly, offensive looking, beast of burden.
A particularly unkind comment came from a lady in Virginia, who suggested that the lawyer should not have posted the photo when she knew she was not photogenic. She added, sadly:
“I hope I do not get nightmares tonight.”
In Shakespeare’s Renaissance era, they had kinder ways of describing women who were not “fair to look upon.”
In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare wrote about a lady:
“You have such a February face…” —a less harmful way of saying that she had an unpleasant face.Even when Shakespeare wanted to sound mean, he gave you the option to choose what animal you wanted to be.
In Timon of Athens, he told somebody:
“I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee something.”
While it meant that the person had no redeeming qualities, Shakespeare was considerate enough to offer a retort: “At least, I am not a dog.”
So, in September 2025, Facebook gave social media a February face.
Most ironically, the intelligent lawyer who owned that face has taught us great lessons: to look beyond polished appearances and filtered photos, and explore the capacious intellectual and creative energies in the people around us.
Naomi has taught us that the internet age has missed a lot by making a veritable capital of cosmetic and beautiful things, and in the process, made nonsense of things we should treasure.
We have inflated our buttocks and deflated our brains.
We have invested in bleaching creams to whiten our skins, instead of learning to love our natural look.
We have built an oasis of buffoonery in spaces meant for intelligent minds.
Who is more beautiful?
With so much poise and grace, Lawyer Naomi dignified our wicked comments with instructive words from a pure heart, boldly putting forth her worth in these few words:
“I am not an aesthetically beautiful person but I love myself.”
That was just the tip of the ocean of premium goodies that lawyer Naomi Pilula sits on.
When she spoke, the world was amazed at the raw beauty of her intelligence, flawless English, and depth of wisdom.
She is a learned friend—not your average Joe.
She was defiant not to pull the picture, but added more photos to convince social media about other shades of her beauty.
That is conviction. Brains with brawn.
Last week, it was reported that Naomi has been invited to walk the runway at the prestigious Paris Fashion Week, to celebrate her confidence and resilience.
Now, the woman with a February face will have her face splashed across the yearly calendar of twelve months.
On Facebook, a commentator asked:
“Who is more beautiful: The illiterate woman who invested money to buy long wigs and bleaching creams to keep up appearances, or the brilliant lawyer who was proud of her natural appearance and eventually went to run the Paris Runway?”
Unlike Naomi, many of us do not love our reflection in the mirror.
Ladies look like the scariest forms of their apparitions without make-up.
We have not only bleached our skins; we have bleached the melanin off our brains, unable to appreciate anything that does not come with a Caucasian veneer.
We have gone ahead of God’s own biology to bleach the skins of babies while they are still in the womb. Pregnant women drink poisonous and cancerous substances to force their babies’ skins to give up their dark colour, so they do not come out looking as black as the babies next door.
They are beautiful only if they look white—or at least, near white.
Tumtum Broni and Odo Broni
We have also bleached our vocabulary to make any virtue sound drab and ugly if it presented in the language of the Negro.
Sister Serwaa was not beautiful until she became Serwaa Broni, whereupon her skin suddenly turned red.
Awuraba tumtum doesn’t sound posh enough until we say Tumtum Broni.
Daddy Lumba knitted together the different strands of our love for anything white into Odo Broni—the symbolism of a beautiful woman who would have been less pleasant to look upon if she was just black.
A tinge of obroni makes the black less black.
Not Naomi Pilula. For her, black is better presented black, in all its natural blackness.
Before Naomi, Lizzie Velásquez was dubbed the ugliest woman in the world. She was born with progeroid syndrome, a rare congenital disease that prevents her from gaining weight.
Today, she is a motivational speaker and has appeared on TED Talk.
You think you are beautiful? Have you been on the Runway?
Tissues of the Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com
Ottawa, Accra
