The Jewelry Makes the Woman

From infancy girls and boys are marked different by jewelry.  All baby girls’ ears are pierced, boys’ are not.  While this little fact comes in handy when doing baby weighing and guessing which one was which, this identification is very persistent and you are not really female unless you wear earrings.

Coming to Togo I didn’t know what I was expecting and the logical thing seemed to not bring much jewelry at all.  I guess it was some silly idea that I didn’t want to draw attention to myself even with cheap fake jewelry that someone might mistake for being of value, but now I wish I had brought more with me.  My two pairs of earrings, now one thanks to my clumsiness, are sufficient, but I wear them every day and it is only time until I wear them out or lose them.  

I remember the first time I dared to leave my house without my earrings in, OK more like I forgot to put them in; my host mother was a little shocked and with a worried voice asked what had happened to my earrings.  At the time I assumed she was just concerned that I had lost them seeing as how jewelry can be valuable.

A second time I didn’t wear my earrings in public, a midwife, whom I had just met, reached over and grabbed my earlobe, “hmm, just checking.  Why are you not wearing your earrings?”  I don’t know... I didn’t feel like it? I forgot? They were making me uncomfortable? There are plenty of reasons why on a perfectly normal day I might not wear them, but apparently this is somewhat unacceptable. 

Just this last week a male colleague of mine did exactly the same thing.  In the middle of a conversation about a project we are working on he reached over and grabbed my ear.  “Women wear earrings, why are you not wearing any?”  Considering this conversation was happening in my own courtyard after I had been woken up from a nap I assumed that it would be OK not to be wearing my jewelry, I guess not.

Can they not see my long hair, my dress, or my female form?  Are earrings really needed to let them know I’m not a man in disguise?  Yes, in the US earrings are stereotypically a female adornment, but rarely is a woman’s identity specifically focused on her ears.  Unlike in America, in Togo there are extremely few to no men with pierced ears.  I am so used to seeing body adornments on both men in women, in both the US and my National Geographic version of Africa; I am surprised to find piercings only on the ears and only on women.  It’s a practice I’ve had to get used to in order to be integrated in my community and it has taken effort, even now I find my hands subconsciously wandering to my ears, just checking…yup, no worries, female today.