Conclusion

Drawing together the previous chapters’ discussions of feminine respectability, the Conclusion focuses on the tensions young women experience as they attempt to reconcile personal ambition with societal expectations and as they navigate quotidian life in the city alongside the longer-term objectives of ending their single status. The Conclusion reiterates the book’s two arguments, articulating how feminine youthhood is a period shaped by contingencies, which not only render young women vulnerable but also encourage them to contribute to the uncertainties that shape urban life in contemporary Nigeria. While the previous chapters have discussed how dissimulation, illusion, and concealment shape young women’s lives, and the ambiguous attitudes young women have towards these forms of uncertainty, the Conclusion questions when the fake is categorically immoral. Doing so, young women are inserted into a broader discussion of the means of sustaining, as well as the perceived threats to, social reproduction in urban Nigeria.