Womenswear

No, this is not a fashion post. It’s a brief thought about women’s right to wear whatever the hell they want without fear of being victimised because of it.

My teenage daughter often complains about the inappropriate attention she gets from men, and I jokingly advised her to get a shalwar kameez and a burka to forestall the gazes of men. She sternly corrected me: “No, Mother, we need to build a society in which a woman can wear whatever she wants without being harassed by men.”

She’s completely right, of course.

Chris Rock has this bit about the clothing women wear, something to the effect of, if I see a policeman I can identify him by his uniform; a woman dressed in skimpy clothes should know that she’s wearing a slut’s uniform, so she shouldn’t be surprised when people mistake her for a slut. I understand his point: we take visual cues from the way people carry themselves and the clothes they wear, and, whether we want to admit it or not, our clothing is a kind of badge and a part of our nonverbal communication. And, yes, I think there’s such a thing as inappropriate clothing. Given what we know about the way society has been constructed and the way women’s oppression works, sometimes wearing revealing clothing is like painting a bull’s eye on our vaginas.

But I still agree with my daughter. Women should have the right to wear whatever they want, regardless of how ill-advised the outfit is.

Gay marriage and the law in Trinidad and Tobago

This morning I read a story in the T&T Guardian about a discussion in the Senate regarding same-sex marriage. The story says, in part, “Finance Minister Winston Dookeran said the issue of  same-sex marriages was something Parliament would have to adjudicate upon at some time. He said there were laws on the books concerning co-habitation and ‘we don’t want to contradict one piece of legislation with another.'”

Discussion on Facebook this morning after I posted the link naturally turned to the archaic laws regarding buggery: how could we think about same-sex marriage when it is still illegal for men to have sex with men? What is a marriage for?

As the Finance Minister alluded, one must wonder whether existing laws on marriage or common law relationships–including the disposal of property and estates in inheritance law–would need to be amended before same-sex marriage could be legally countenanced in Trinidad and Tobago.

I looked it up. While the Marriage Act 1996, which you can find here on a list of our laws, does not seem to explicitly define the genders of the “parties” it mentions, the Cohabitational Relationships Act of 1998 does. That Act defines “cohabitant” as:

(a) in relation to a man, a woman who is living or has lived with a man as his wife in a cohabitational relationship; and

(b) in relation to a woman, a man who is living with or has lived with a woman as her husband in a cohabitational relationship;

‘cohabitational relationship’ means the relationship between cohabitants, who not being married to each other are living or
have lived together as husband and wife on a bona fide domestic basis”.

It also occurred to me that the Domestic Violence Act of 1999 also would need to be changed because it, too, defines a cohabitant as ” a person who has lived with or is living with a person of the opposite sex as a husband or wife although not legally married to that person”.

So it’s great that we have begun to think about the question of same-sex marriage in Trinidad and Tobago. However, we have a long way to go–legally as well as socially–before we can make it an option for our people.

(After this first was posted I got a couple of questions asking me which side I was on. This column I wrote in the T&T Guardian two years ago is pretty clear on that issue.)

Song for a lonely soul

It was 1989? 1990? and I was a wild teenager in acid washed jeans that were strategically ripped across my right buttock cheek, just where my ass could hang out a little bit. My father hated those jeans, threatened to beat me if I wore them another time… but I ignored him and Carnival Tuesday found me in town with that right asscheek hanging out as I chipped behind Minshall following Rudder like a pied piper.

Soca music

Take me, won’t you take me

Take me back to my island

Trinity mountain

Calling me home

Taking me high

Soca was never better for me than it was that day, my legs intertwined with the posts of a steel pedestrian barrier as I stood a head and a half higher than the crowd, higher in every sense even though I wasn’t drinking, exhilarated by that song, the mas, the crowd’s euphoria and my own sense of danger and sexiness in those jeans. That song raises my pores up to today.

There’s no soca like the soca of your youth. And that is the reason soca gets “worse” every year. It’s not the music, darling. It’s you.

Beauty and the bamsee

I read this story after my friend Tillah Willah posted it on Facebook. The upshot of it is that a black British girl died after getting some bogus silicone injection to make her bottom bigger. She was a dancer and had lost out on a job after going to an audition wearing padded pants.

While I think most elective cosmetic surgery is ridiculous and unnecessary, including buttock augmentation, I can feel why someone would be driven to such an extreme measure. Having grown up gloriously flat bottomed in Trinidad & Tobago, I can testify that it is not easy for a black woman to be without a big bottom. We (at least most of us in the Caribbean, the US and the UK) have a culture that deifies a woman’s bottom. We sing songs about it. We create dances just so the glute-gifted can shine. We dress to highlight it. We fetishise it in porn and popular culture. And, yes, when we walk down the street we are told, in no uncertain terms, whether our bottoms are good enough.

I’m not saying we ought to agree with any of this; I’m just pointing out what exists in our culture. When a flat bottomed girl is growing up in a black cultural context, she will more likely than not suffer shame at some level that she is inadequate and unattractive because of her bottom. It took me a long time to appreciate my bottom for what it is: the proud legacy of my Ameridian/Indian/Syrian/European heritage. And even so I’m still a little wistful sometimes when I look at myself in a pair of jeans. Would I wear padded pants or get surgical intervention to “correct” it? Hell, no. But I could see where the misguided sister was coming from. The cult of the bamsee is strong.

Thank you, kind sir

Sent this letter to the editor today. Sort of self-explanatory.

The Editor:

On February 8, 2011, my wallet fell unnoticed from my friend’s lap as she alighted from my car on the Diego Martin Main Road. Although searches were made, the wallet was not afterwards found on the road where it had fallen. Later that evening, after having reported the loss to the police, I received a telephone call from a kind stranger who had found the wallet in the nearby Starlite Shopping Centre car park. He had got my number from a document in the wallet while waiting at the address given on my driver’s permit.
The gentleman went out of his way to return the wallet and its remaining contents, knowing how valuable they would be to me.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to him for his kindness and compassion. Anyone who has lost his or her wallet would agree that the cost and hassle of replacing lost bank cards, national ID cards and driver’s permits are taxing. He has saved me a lot of expense and worry and I salute him for his generosity and civic mindedness.

Lisa Allen-Agostini

NB: The cash in the wallet was missing, but that’s no surprise, especially given that the spot where the wallet fell was opposite a crack house. I’m also now missing one debit card. But in the grand scheme of things, I’m thrilled to have it back, even sans cash. Lining up for a day at Licensing, going for new debit cards and a new ID card–not to mention the customer loyalty cards and so on I also had in the wallet–was not looking too appetising.

The gentleman was a real lifesaver.

A weekend at the Hilton

Just before Christmas, the Lady and I went to the Hilton Trinidad’s annual media brunch, which is held in the still lovely La Boucan Restaurant every December. I’ve gone to the brunch before with the Lady (who I think was featured in Talk of Trinidad wielding a large knife and fork and attacking some suckling pig with gusto while Ali Khan, Hilton’s charming general manager, looked on in wonder). It is usually fun and this year was no different. We got there very, very late but still managed to hear the awards Ali Khan and his staff gave out for media coverage over the past year. I also snagged some excellent sushi and ceviche and all the dessert on offer. Yum.

At the end of the awards, guests were invited to reach under their chairs to find freebies from the hotel–ranging from dinner to brunch and weekends for two. The Lady and I were alone at our table, thanks to being so late, and she found a voucher for the weekend for two. We immediately started plotting how we were going to take advantage of the gift.

Now, you need to know two things: one, I would share out the gifts I got as a journalist (almost always, anyway), in order to keep myself more or less honest; and two, I no longer work in the daily media so there is little chance of the Hilton getting me to give them good publicity except on this sadly neglected blog or my Facebook page. I thought about these things while the Lady was dancing with glee at winning her gift voucher and decided to let her accept it.

While I was a reporter I was privileged to travel for work many times. The publication of Trinidad Noir has also taken me to various destinations and my big sister’s kindness has, too. I’ve stayed in some really rubbish hotels but I’ve also stayed at some really nice ones: the Churchill in DC, the Kura Hulanda in Curacao, el Conquistador in Puerto Rico, for example. The Lady hasn’t been around as much as I in the hotel department but her aunty used to call the San Juan Ritz-Carlton her club, so there was a certain expectation in mind when she thought “hotel”.

I’ve stayed at relatively few hotels in Trinidad and Tobago, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Hilton. My stay at the Tobago Hilton some years ago was nondescript so I was keeping my hopes around “clean and comfortable”. I was pleasantly surprised to open the door of our room to find this:

Though we had a room behind the pool–more on that in a bit–and, therefore, no view, the room itself was delicious. The shower, which I didn’t take a picture of, featured one of those rain showerheads, and the La Source guest shampoo and bodywash were heavenly and luxurious. I was also pleasantly surprised at the sharp room service, because as we all know Trinidad’s customer service usually sucks big time. Jai, who brought us breakfast the first morning, was quick, friendly and helpful. And breakfast was grand–giant plates of fruit, toast, croissants, danish, muffins, a mushroom and sweet pepper omelette, scrambled eggs and more bacon than we ought to eat in a week.

Seeing that her main reason for wanting to come to the Hilton was to use the pool (room service was second on the list of things she wanted that weekend), the Lady jumped in Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. I have to say the pool was the nadir of our stay: its filter seemed to be broken so workmen had to insert a portable one every day and once it spilled its contents back into the water during its extrication. Yuck. The whole area behind the pool is blocked off by a wooden paling because it is under renovation. To get to the lobby or pool guests on our wing had to walk through the whole hotel because the door on that wing is closed until the renovations are done. None of that deterred the Lady from having a good time but since I spent most of the weekend poolside on a lounger I had a lot of time to contemplate those unpleasant features.

Another low point was the service at breakfast on our last morning. Breakfast was served in the Poolside Restaurant and the food, served buffet-style, was tasty and unlimited–but the service was appalling. I had asked the rushed maitre d’ for a cup of tea since there was no waiter in evidence; he eventually had to serve me himself when I went looking for it, cup in hand. Only two waiters seemed to be on duty, even though there was a line of at least twenty people by the door when we left the packed dining room.

However, these considerations aside, the weekend was marvelous. I never knew there were such friendly CSRs in Trinidad as the ones at the front desk, and I was really pleased by how elegant and luxurious our standard room was. I’d recommend the hotel to anyone–as long as they don’t plan to do much swimming.

Being there

Friday last week saw me on the edge of my seat at The Lady’s school Spelling Bee finals. The school has just started this school-wide competition and they hope to make it an annual event. The inaugural event was short and decisive; The Lady took the Std 5 championship after stumbling over “magnanimous” in her second round (but all the competitors also missed their words so the round was discounted).

I was overwhelmingly proud of her, not just for winning, but for actually learning over 300 spelling words in preparation for the tournament. (The last round in the finals, however, included words not on the list.) She stuck to it and was rewarded with the win.

Most of the girls who took part in the finals did so under the gaze of at least one parent or guardian, except for one girl who had no parent there to cheer her on. I wonder if that made a difference to her?

In my childhood my parents rarely, if ever, attended my school events. I might come home and announce I had won something, or taken part in something else, and they would be happy in an abstracted kind of way. Coming to those things was not a priority for them.

I wonder if it made a difference to me? I can’t remember. But I know The Lady wanted me there at her Spelling Bee and I made sure to be there on time as she requested. I sat up in front and beamed loving attention to her all through the contest. I think it made a difference, my being there.

Looking at 40

I”ll be 37 in a few days. Because I still feel as though I’m somewhere in my mid-twenties it always comes as a surprise when I realise that, yes, it’s 2010 and that means I’m definitely not in my twenties anymore. I mean, wasn’t it just yesterday I was ringing in my 26th birthday in the Queen’s Park Savannah with the Vox Crew, led by my brother Taye and Remy “Rembunction” Yearwood, as they sang happy birthday, drowning out Wyclef’s performance?

But it’s a decade later. No concerts in the Savannah this year, I think. No throngs of well-wishers. Instead, wrinkles on my neck, two or three unfinished projects (a couple more unstarted, even), a pitiful bank balance, a beat-up car, long-dead parents, a semi-abandoned career as a journalist, and worse hearing with every day (possibly from too many concerts, in the Savannah and elsewhere, when I was young). Counting my blessings: great friends I don’t see enough, great friends who have seen me through decades of years and gallons of tears; two daughters who delight and amaze me daily; a kitten who pees all over the house but whom I love like I’ve never loved an animal before; an NGO and a great team to help build it; one short novel and a book I’ve edited.

My wrinkly neck. By age 40 I'll look like I'm ready for a Thanksgiving pardon.

Peering down the road at 40, I can see more wrinkles, perhaps less cat pee, if I’m lucky and Fennec gets some behaviour. Maybe I’ll go back into journalism, and that would help the bank balance, even, possibly, the beat-up car. Maybe not; I’m too accustomed now to doing what I like, mostly when I like it, to go back to the rigor and inconvenience of being on someone else’s time clock. When the NGO grows up, as it must, maybe I will earn an actual salary and be able to support myself from it. Or maybe I’ll just hold out until the children are grown and they can support me for a change. (Ha. Miss Thing just announced she wants to be an anthropologist. Damn, must she get the “earn no money” gene from her father and me? On the upside, The Lady says she wants to be rich and famous. There is hope yet.)

At least reaching this age I can dismiss or refine some aspirations. I definitely won’t have the BMW I wished I’d had by age 30. I might have to push the Nobel Prize back to age 70. Bummer. My Great West Indian Novel is yet to be finished; maybe it will be “published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries” (to steal Miss Thing’s pet phrase) by the time I’m 45? That’s only eight years away. One thing about growing older: you definitely learn that time flies–the Concorde.

Fazeer, MATT and the government’s rights

I worked with Fazeer Mohammed and his wife at the Guardian when they both were there in the early to mid-nineties. I can’t say we were great friends but we had the casual, friendly interaction that characterises many office relationships; I knew they were orthodox Muslim but it never impaired their functioning, she in payroll and he in journalism. I’ve since been interviewed by him twice on CNMG’s talk show First Up, the most recent time being just a few weeks ago, with Roslyn Carrington, to publicise the Allen Prize and its inaugural seminar. He is a bright, on-point journalist with an aggressive but respectful interview style and to me it was a pleasure to be the subject of his questioning. But then again, I’m not a government minister.

Fazeer’s “downsizing” from that job at CNMG, described, he said, as a “cost cutting” measure, has left many media workers and observers keenly uncomfortable. MATT issued a press release in protest of the decision not only to fire Fazeer after a controversial interview with a government minister, but to replace him with Andy Johnson, erstwhile journalist and now the head of the Government Information Service.

GIS employees routinely go back and forth between privately owned media and the GIS, but I don’t know a single one who confuses the two. GIS is the GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SERVICE. The people who work there may be reporters, editors and cameramen, but their responsibilities are very different from those of other media workers; they are there to report the business of the government, from the angle the government dictates. (Does it need to be said that privately owned media don’t have the same goal?) Andy Johnson is an excellent talk show host, and was a brilliant journo when he wrote for the Guardian and the Express–but he’s now the head of the GIS and there’s no way he belongs on air in anything other than GIS programming. CNMG is state-owned but it has from time to time asserted its editorial independence; you can tell that Fazeer, at least, believed that spiel. In the transcript of the excerpt of the interview I read in the paper, he asks a hard question about Kamla’s unfortunate statement on disaster aid but never gets an answer; instead, he was accused in the interview of being anti-Kamla and (as an orthodox Muslim) opposed to women’s leadership.

If it is government policy to usurp the editorial autonomy of CNMG stations, and to make CNMG employees government mouthpieces like employees of the GIS, then there should be a clear statement iterating that. If not, CNMG staff should be left to do their jobs without fearing they will be downsized if they step on the wrong toes or imply anything but complete support for the government of the day.

A thought on book reviewing

I finally finished writing a book review that I had started cogitating on back in August. Sad, but true.

The main problem I had was how to write about the story without writing a spoiler. That’s usually one of the main concerns with writing reviews of any kind: how do you say what a great/awful story it was if you can’t actually say what the story was?

It took me this long to figure out how to write this one, possibly because the story affected me so much. The book is really moving and relevant to the Caribbean, but the conclusion is so harsh that you can’t help but give a *gulp* of terror when you read it. In sitting to write the review this morning, I decided to take a look at some statistics related to the plot and see if I couldn’t use them as a way into the analysis. Anyway, a few hours later… I finished. Three months to write 800 words. Sad, but true.