TALENT

As a child, I may have had a skewed perception about what talent was (so I am made to think now). To me then, talent was one that was to amuse or to awe people – talents to me included ability to sing and rap well, dance, intelligence and a few I can’t remember now. When I was a child, before 14 years, I classified talented girls as those who were highly intelligent, those who weren’t easily intimidated by the fact that they were females and were much focused on success. Back then, I had no idea that a girl could be talented for being just beautiful (and to a large extent dumb). I happened to be in the “A” class back in my junior high school days and this class was noted for brilliant people; the girls were extremely brilliant and much focused on making it in life and to me, those were what I called talented girls.

 

I go to Senior High School and have to embark on a re-socialization process to update my mental faculty that a girl can be talented for being just beautiful even if she is last in examination (should beauty be all that she had). Hence, I was easily disgusted by girls who begged for respect because of their facial or body construction. I was equally annoyed by boys who demanded to be treated in a special manner just because their parents were rich, because they smoked or because they dressed in a provocative manner. I grew sadly to accept that the word talented had been pushed so low to accommodate a lot of anti-social activities.

 

Well I knew that a girl could be talented and beautiful because of what she had acquired through hard work and sacrifice. But the current trend suggest otherwise; women can now be praise and treated with respect because of how they look. This trend is becoming increasingly popular on especially Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr. I am for one person is not against a female because she is beautiful (it will be childish to do so), I am against one who behaves like the whole world revolves around her beauty. A female is worth more than that; a female is one who is ready to change the world she is in, one who is ready to sacrifice to make the world a better place for us – I only wonder how one can use just beauty to achieve this. “Beauty without brains”

Now, the music industry is now a safe haven for some people. It is no longer populated by people with talent. Hence, it is not uncommon to see boys rapping about being “dope”, rich and handsome on a borrowed instrumental. Most of these people barely know that music is not just about the heavy drums, synthizers and the noise they make, music was meant to educate or carry across a message. How on Earth does “I have money you don’t, I am dope, you are f**king n**ga” benefit the world? Most of these music cannot be played on radio – it is full of provocative words so much that if it were to be played on radio, we might only hear 10% of the words used in the song.

 

I maybe a bit old school but I believe talent is not all about having a beautiful skin, make up and provocative dressing. If you have talent, use it to help the world. I have been forced, rather sadly, to accept that a girl can be talented just because she is beautiful but I am definitely not going to accept the fact that a boy can be talented because he smokes or he has a knickers at his knees. I don’t see the talent in that, let us raise the standards of the game up.