Among the Yoruba people, women are grouped into seven different categories. Two
of the categories are regarded as wife
materials, two are barely good as bedmates,
while the remaining three are those you
don’t touch with a six-inch pole, for any
reason. They have a saying for that: “meje
l’obinrin mo. Meji laa fe, meji laa ba lo’po. Meta to ku, makan ni”. For the purpose of this discourse, I will mention the last three that our elders warn us not to marry. The first is the dirty woman (obinrin obun). If you marry her, you risk the health of the entire family. The second is the proud
woman (obinrin onigberaga). This one carries the pride of her father’s household on her shoulders everywhere she goes. She is the arrogant type; a peacock of a personage. She talks down on people, sees everyone as an extension of her father’s servants. She measures every person she comes across by the affluence of her family. God help any average man who suffers the misfortune of having such a woman as wife. The problem with this type is that no matter what you do, she sees herself as the master and her opinion alone counts. She is a modern day “boss lady”. The last of the trio is the indecorous woman. She is the worst type imaginable. She is simply referred to as “asa obinrin”. She is temperamental, simply incorrigible, very untrainable, intractable and pathetically uncharitable. “Asa obinrin” is not just mannerless; she is also shameless. She is like Yanrinbo, the wife of Tortoise, who was absent when Orunmila was sharing dignity and moral rectitude. She does the unthinkable. She fights, drinks and gets drunk; commits adultery and when she gets back home, unties her wrapper for her husband to have his due benevolence. Asa Obinrin is “makan” – touch not. Her Odu Ifa prescribes “obu”, the one that has no principles of life, and no man marries her and lives happily thereafter. She is not just bad-headed; she is equally double left- footed (elese osi meji).
This type is also called “ba’seje” – the spoiler of that which is good. She is also called “pami nku obinrin, ti nsoribenbe soko”(the daredevil who challenges her own husband) A man marries an “asa obinrin” at the expense of his joy and happiness; respect and dignity. Whenever her Odu surfaces on the divination board, the Babalawo asks that it should be thrown away. Once a man marries her, she becomes undetachable! The man gets disentangled from her evil grips only by divine intervention.