BENEVOLENT MISOGYNY AND THE REPRESENTATION OF IGBO WOMANHOOD IN LOVE IN EVERY WORD

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of Igbo womanhood in the romantic Nollywood film series Love in Every Word (Parts 1 and 2, 2025), arguing that the films deploy what this study terms benevolent misogyny, a cultural form of gender control that disguises itself as love, protection and admiration. The argument is substantiated by Rosalind Gill's concept of postfeminist sensibility and Glick and Fiske's (1996) ambivalent sexism theory, which are used to conduct a close analysis of the films' narrative structure, visual choices and dialogue to show how the male lead's financial dominance, persistent pursuit, proprietary language and systematic management of the female character's autonomy are framed as romance rather than recognised as red flags. The paper gives attention to the Igbo name Achalugo, arguing that its deployment in the film both invokes and distorts the cultural meanings of Igbo womanhood embedded in the Igbo naming tradition. This study commends the effort of the producers in celebrating the Igbocultural identity through language and names, but however, these acts also construct a version of Igbo womanhood that is different from the power and agency Igbo women exercised during the pre-colonial era.The paper concludes that Nollywood's new romantic template is not a faithful cultural representation but a Post feminism revision of patriarchy, one that dresses old constraints in the aesthetics of Igbo tradition.