Gifts for Women – Can a sane man chance it

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday August 11, 2026 10:44

Wrong. You’ve just entered the Gift Minefield. Flowers? Too cliché. Perfume? Wrong scent - instant disaster. Jewellery? Wrong style - ‘Do you even know me?’ couch duty. You should avoid buying clothes, but not because women don't like clothes. Men buying women’s clothes is like trying to play darts blindfolded, in a sandstorm, while the dartboard is moving. The only winning move is not to play. The problem is sizes.

Women’s clothing sizes are like a secret code written by a committee of lunatics. You pick up a dress and the tag says ‘Size 46.’ Forty-six what? Inches? Centimetres? Kilometres? You could measure that dress with every known scientific instrument—micrometer, laser scanner, particle accelerator—and you would never find any dimension that is 46 of anything.

And here’s the kicker: even if you find another dress labeled ‘Size 46,’ it will not be the same size. In fact, it might not even be the same species. One could fit a Barbie doll, the other could double as a parachute. To make matters worse, no woman on Earth will ever admit to being a ‘Size 46.’ If you say, ‘I bought you a Size 46,’ she’ll look at you like you just called her a hippo.

Another problem is colour. Women do not see colour the way men do. Suppose several women are in a paint store, looking at a sample of orange paint. The paint-can label may say ‘orange,’ and the paint may appear obviously orange to a male, but the women will never use the word ‘orange’ to describe it.

They will say things like: ‘It has a lot of blue’ or ‘It's much too gray.’ Don't ask me to explain it. All I know is, if a woman tells a man she'd like a green scarf for Christmas, he'll go out and buy a scarf that he believes to be green, based on his concept of ‘green,’ which he got from crayons in Standard 2. She will look at the scarf as if it were covered with lice, then show it to her friends and say: ‘I asked hubby for a green scarf, and just look at what he got me.’

They'll all have a good laugh, and she'll return it. While men’s colour vocabulary is like free crayons kids get at Wimpy: red, blue, green, yellow women’s colour vocabulary is like a 64-pack of crayons with fancy names. A hat might be seen by a man as innocently white but a woman will call it egg-shell white or ivory or snow.

We once argued about the colour of the uniform of one of the secondary schools in GC. Just as the group that said it was blue was about to win, in stepped a lady who boldly claimed it was turquoise.

Now none of the male species in that group had ever heard of turquoise and we agreed that since it was a lady and we had never heard of such a colour so the uniform must be turquoise.

Makeup kit? Sure—as long as you remember the right brand. Because if you buy the wrong one, suddenly you’ve gifted her ‘clown starter pack.’ So I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll be clever. I’ll get her a skincare programme.’ Big mistake. Skincare kits are basically a chemistry set disguised as beauty products. It’s a wide spectrum of mysterious liquids that somehow all end up on a woman’s face within minutes. You’ve got: • A cleanser (to remove the stuff you just put on). • A toner (to prepare for the next stuff you’re about to put on). • A serum (which sounds like something you’d inject into a superhero). • A moisturizer (to undo the damage caused by the serum). • And then—another moisturizer, but for nighttime only, because apparently your face knows what time it is. The trick is to know all these and buy them all before your wallet gets fatigued by the cost. Miss one of these little bottles of ‘magic’ and the whole system collapses. And wives don’t want that! (For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) *Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.