No more beads and baubles
Every year I promise myself that I will look and feel good playing mas no matter what. Every year, I conveniently develop amnesia, forgetting the anti-climax of the preceding year and signing up like a fresh-faced daisy expectations in hand. And every year, without fail, I experience the circus all over again.
The torture begins when you sign up for a band. You know instinctively that you are conned from the moment you start viewing the costumes online for the ‘costumes’ never look like that in real. Like the traditional catwalk, these contraptions are just for show! Forget the finished glossy website images. But you’re still, in your delirious delusion, living in hope. Your mantra is this: surely, one of those thousands of cheap spandex would, in some way, make me look good, not fabulous, mind you, we have already settled for just looking good. But alas, abandon that wish. From inception, you slowly realise that in order to play any pretty mas it is mandatory that you leave half of your body at home, just so that you could fit into the cat-in-bag imports from China – and that is even before the carnival has started.
As you race to the appointed venue to collect your cheaply-finished cardboard box on collection day, you strain yourself to get a peek inside as the detached mas camp volunteers, hold you in suspense as they read you the riot act – the do’s and don’t’s of what hand band to wear, when to wear it and warn you what will happen if you don’t. Oh and this is your first fabulous introduction into customer-service a la Trini style ... never mind that you have paid $5,000 and counting for this opportunity! Once the rule book has been read out, you get your first glimpse of the ‘costume’. It is more like a cost without the ume! All you see is a mass produced, cheap looking bikini bottom that looks as if it was meant for a pubescent teenager. In a daze, you begin to reach for the greasy brown paper bag that the half eaten roti was stuffed into, hoping to blow into it to stave off the anxiety attack that you feel creeping up on you. Breathe. Hold it in. Don’t burst. Focus. Then without warning the ‘bra-top’ registers among the other trinkets in the box. At first it looks like a skull cap made for a baby doll, garishly adorned with every colour bead and brocade they could put their hands on, but like the neurotic little piggy going to market, you ignore the signs, you fling away with gusto, your consumer rights and sensibilities, and you join the fracas. The do-it-yourself pscho-babble kicks in, and you say to yourself: my glass is half-full..not half-empty, at the very least my nipples will be covered. Perhaps I should put in the ‘suggestion box’ that maybe they should start measuring ‘teat diameters’ instead of bust size. As I snuck a look around me, and guess-timated, on average, I’m seeing a 36B and upwards, posse here, let’s hope the various pairs of nipples are all neatly finished to the same meticulous standard so that none are left out in the cold. I can’t wait to see their faces as they confront the ‘nipple warmers’ in the boxes. Still each woman for herself I thought.
Next is the trying on. Another rite of passage. You begin the tortuous ritual of trying on your costume as they herd you over to the cupboard space that they call the changing area. You see your image in the old, spotty mirror in the badly lit ‘ changing area’. You stare at the parts of your body trying to escape the harness that you have been put into. It’s the mirror, it’s not me. The women volunteers dominatrix are looking at you as if to say, shame on you, being so plump, that you cannot fit into your costume. They begin to pull you and shove you this way and that, as if to prove that by folding your flabby skin over, pinching you along the way, you will somehow fit into it.... I stand there paralysed, amazed that I could allow myself to be humiliated like this ... AND I’m paying most of my monthly salary to have this ‘experience’! Soothing your nerves by telling yourself that your mirror at home will never give off such a reflection. The lighting too, it’s flawed. I don’t look like that at all. The penny hasn’t dropped yet. You’re still in denial. You are told that there are ‘no exchanges’ even though it’s clearly not your size. I listlessly said, knowing full well I had no recourse, ‘if you say so Madame, I did put my measurements down as ‘medium’ but I guess in China that perhaps tabulates to vital statistics of 10 inch bust, 10inch waist, and 10inch hips...Next year I will remember to put plus, plus size 20, hoping my sarcasm would at least make them feel as bad as I was feeling. No such luck. The space-cadet (meaning she looked as animated as a wet sponge), younger ‘volunteer’ looked at me with pity, stating.... ‘if somebody tell we that is dey size, the band leader would not let you play in d band...he only want tin girls...you shoulda go to the gym and wuk out and stop eating carbs...da is what yuh does have to do come karneeval time! Anyhow yuh still have a few days... just starve yuhself nah.. you go be good!
And given all of this, you still, happily part with your $5,000 plus to facilitate that elusive dream. You have even decided, at this stage, that you will have to leave your normally chaste, reserved behaviour at home for the two days and just experience it fully. You will force a happy ‘wine’, plastic cup in hand filled with your ‘all inclusive’ not-so-premium alcohol beverage. Here we come, happy-go-luckly, mas-playing, reveller. All of we is one! You will show the world that you are alive and kicking, and if you’re lucky you might even get a 30-second shot on camera as you cross the stage at the ungodly hour of 7:00am in the morning, rum in hand, instead of your usual cup of coffee. It’s a good thing you passed on the bake and saltfish all inclusive breakfast and opted for the shot of rum, killing two birds with one stone – keeping the belly as flat as possible and getting a quick ‘head’ in the process.
The sub-text of all of this is that as women, we still desire to look ‘good’ despite the hardships of holding down a dead-end job that takes up all our time and energy, rearing our children, paying for all their over-rated, organised activities that is supposed to make them sociable and well-adjusted citizens, and still managing to appear married even though our respective spouses are busy playing mas all year round, 365 days of wining and jamming on anything that moves. Now you see why many of us cannot resist the revelry and comraderie of our carnival. If you’re single and not-so-young, that’s another story... ‘crapaud smoke yuh pipe’. Your sell-by date is gone. To put it into perspective, statistics show that you have a bigger chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting ‘hitched’. You’ll be on the shelf until some loser decides he wants to sample an ‘ole fowl’.
Yes, there are many who do, but many of us are not willing to give up trying just yet. I certainly haven’t. So clutching your envelope full of cash and quieting the little niggling thoughts going round in your head .... Thoughts, like ‘why am I giving these already wealthy, inexperienced mas-pretenders my hard earned cash’? We all know that they are not really designers. Most of them have as much artistic talent as the stale Carib beers they farm out to their loyal masqueraders on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. These inexperienced Johnny-come-latelys, hard-core business folk, (parading as band-leaders and designers), making their million dollar profits minus customer service, on your head!
But that’s the beauty of it. You do it. You don’t have to have a reason other than you’re chasing the dream like everyone else. Carnival is our thing, our culture, our national past-time. Isn’t it, after all what makes us all quintessentially ‘Trinibagonian’ and it’s the only time in the year that we really do come together .... all of we is one!
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