Mrs Kidero, please keep that apology to yourself!
I have always held Dr Susan Mboya-Kidero in high regard. I have always been impressed by her queenly grace and beauty.
She is a smart, well-schooled, well-travelled and aptly exposed woman who fits her role of ‘first lady’ of Nairobi perfectly.
So imagine my shock when I read last week that she apologised for her husband’s torn sock, taking full responsibility and excusing the man for knowingly wearing a torn sock and shoving it in our faces.
All my admiration and respect for her flew out the window.
I must confess that I am deeply embarrassed and very disappointed by her and what she said.
Surely with her education and success in the corporate world, you would expect more than an unwelcome apology for “this unfortunate oversight.”
Stricter measures
What appalled me even more was her promise to Nairobians: “I am putting stricter measures in place to ensure that this unfortunate incident is never repeated.”
Mrs Kidero’s apology was in bad taste.
It was a retrogressive move that took women a 100 years back when they used to apologise for their men’s misbehaviour.
Dr Kidero wore a torn sock because he wanted to.
Not because his wife was any less of a wife or a woman for that matter, and therefore Mrs Kidero should not have apologised.
If my eyesight serves me right, Dr Kidero is a fully-grown man, with a functional brain, well-educated (with a doctorate to boot), with near-perfect eyesight and I am sure, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the chap can tell a good sock from a torn one.
What’s more, I believe that if the man can run an entire city, then he knows better than to wear a torn sock, and hold it out for the cameras to click away.
Women have come a long way to the emancipation and empowerment that young women like me enjoy today.
In fact, who better to confirm this than Coca-Cola’s Group Director for Women’s Economic Empowerment for Eurasia and Africa — Mrs Kidero?
While I appreciate that wives and women in general have the responsibility to take care of what their men eat and wear.
I am also alive to the fact that men too have a personal responsibility over what they wear, eat, drink and do.
I also appreciate the fact that there are more men who know how to change a diaper than those who can actually find a pair of matching socks in their closets.
That said, I wish to state that this is not about Mrs Kidero’s undeserved apology, far from it.
This is about women making excuses for their men’s mistakes and taking full responsibility for their men’s actions, making them look silly and pathetic.
When will women learn that you cannot stop a man from misbehaving in public and you must not apologise for his mistakes?
Women ought to stop this behaviour of taking responsibility for their men’s bad manners.
What message are you sending to young women like me?
That if my husband messes up, it is entirely my fault and I must take responsibility?
So does it mean if a man sows wild oats, his wife should rush to make excuses or cover-up on his behalf?
What the Governor’s wife should have done was to simply let it go. Don’t apologise. Ignore it.
And if anyone has a problem, then they might as well take it upon themselves to supply the county boss with a year’s worth of good socks — to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Take responsibility
If anyone has to apologise for wearing a torn sock and showing it off in public, then it must be the Governor himself.
It is time men took responsibility for their own actions and learnt that their women will not always be there to take the fall for them.