Is it about time for Kamla?

Woman time now? Kamla Persad-Bissessar




We don't discuss politics much on Islandista, namely because women are still quite under-represented in our regional houses of assembly, so there's not as much to discuss as we'd like.





And quite often, where women aren't under-represented, they are undermined. There have been many capable and intelligent Caribbean female politicians who have waited and waited in the shadows of charismatic male political leaders/mentors to get their chance at leadership, only to be undermined in some way or form - usually by the same mentor who can't let go of power.





Former Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller knows all about it. Barbados' Opposition Leader Mia Mottley is now learning about it.




But Trinidad & Tobago's Opposition MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar could write the book on it.




Every Trini or political junkie islandista recalls her betrayal by mentor Basdeo Panday back in the heat of T&T's 2007 elections, when he chose to lead the party again along with Jack Warner after saying he was not interested in the leadership. This after the loyal Kamla had risen to the task as the party's leader during Panday's enforced absence from Parliament.





And people still talk about her (in?) famous 'No Woman No Cry' speech at a rally during that elections where she vowed her loyalty to the party but said:








"I want to tell my political enemies close to me and far away that Kamla is a woman who gets knocked down, but she gets up again and they are never going to keep me down.




... I never sought to betray this party. I never sought to hold the supporters to ransom... And I never left it. I have never walked out because things weren’t going my way.




... I have worked too long and too hard for both the party and the country and I am not about to give up now.”







But still, she took the insult, sucked salt and stayed loyal to the party and Panday - unlike Maharaj and Jack.




But is the time for that coming to an end?




Last month Kamla announced her intention to contest the leadership of the UNC, declaring:








"No-one is ever going to keep me down again...no one!"







Many will say it's about damn time and point to how the UNC has been devouring itself amidst a pack of the raging male political egos of Ram, Jack and Bas.




Other may say that Kamla is not strong enough to lead the party to victory, especially with wily politicians like Manning and of course Ram, Jack and Bas about the place.





Interestingly enough though, a recent poll by the North American Teachers Association (NACTA) has said that Kamla will win by a landslide.




So what do my Trini islandistas and politically-minded islandistas think?




Will it be, as the people say, 'woman time now' for Kamla?

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Is it about time for Kamla?

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Another soca mummy - Destra pregnant

Wha de jail...!

How on earth did we at islandista miss this?

Soca songbird Destra Garcia is joining the line of soca mummies as she is pregnant with her first child.

She revealed this in an interview with the Trinidad Express last week.

She told the Express she did not even realise she was pregnant for a while as she "always had a bit of an iregular cycle" and she had no morning sickness.

However, she did notice that she had become a bit more bountiful up top, as she had gone up by two bra cup sizes.

The father to be is her long-time boyfriend, Brian Morris, who is the sound engineer for her band, Atlantik. He says the couple is planning marriage to go with baby in the "not too distant future".

However, like the other soca mummies - Alison Hinds, Denyse Belfon and most recently, Fay-Ann Lyons, Destra does not seem to intend to stop performing.

At a recent show at Adam Smith Square in Woodbrook, Saucy Wow coached Destra on how to do de wickedest preggers wine, much to the delight of all the fans.

The baby is due in January 2010 - right, right before Carnival 2010 and it will be interesting to see how Destra copes with the public pressure that is sure to come to bear on her.

You know how we West Indians like to act like pregnancy is a illness that requires a woman to be bed-ridden.

In the meantime, we at Islandista offer our congrats to the mummy to be!

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Rihanna in blackface & Islandistas on I-D cover

Islandistas are all over the place for the September round of fashion magazines.

Islandistas Jourdan Dunn and Arlenis are featured on the cover of the September issue of I-D magazine, along with fellow models of colour Chanel Iman and Sessilee Lopez in a historic all-black cover.

Jourdan, who is five months pregnant (reportedly with a boy), spoke about her baby's father, the pressures on minority models and how she has finally become comfortable with not having the type of body prized in the Afro-Caribbean community.

About her boyfriend:


My boyfriend didn't even know I was a model when I started going out with him and we've been together for three years now. It's hard, you never really know whether people want to be around Jourdan or Jourdan Dunn, and he's been there from when I was just Jourdan.


About her body:


“I’m starting to feel more secure in who I am now. Being from an Afro-Caribbean family, being black, skinny, isn’t really acceptable in that community; it’s all about having curves and stuff.... That’s why I’ve never been comfortable with my body until now, when I realize I can say this is who I am, I’m healthy, I’ve always liked to eat, and I’m now happy enough in my own skin to not give a fuck what anyone says about me any more.


About the pressures on black models:


There are loads of black models working and the idea that there's only a few of us, or four of us, to let in as top models at any one time is just bullsh*t. It creates an unnecessary competition when we should be standing together.


True talk Jourdan. Pity Naomi didn't recognise this back in the day and was so mean to Tyra.

In other islandista fashion magazine news, we have more pics from Rihanna's shoot for the couture supplement of Vogue Italia.

And... we're on the fence about it.

Yes, it is supposed to be edgy and most of the pictures are very dark and stark but in some of them, it's like Klein is just relying on using disturbing and stereotypical imagery to get a rise.

The shots are littered with them - below is a shot that seems to hint at bondage and violence against women - pretty inappropriate considering what Rihanna has been through.




[caption id="attachment_1395" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="photo credit: Stephen Klein for Italian Vogue"][/caption]




There is another shot which seems reminiscent of blackface to me which is ... uncomfortable to do with any black model, far less one whose black and white sides are not many generations back.





Seriously. What the feck is this? We know that is not Rihanna's complexion and she does not even look like this in the majority of the pics so it is not like it is a make-up theme that is running throughout the shoot.







And then this one where she's on her hands and knees - in a pretty animalistic, stalking-type pose.





Black woman as fearsome animal? Hmm. Aren't fetishistic white fashion photogs tired of this yet?




There are other great shots like the two below but the inclusion of these kinds of images is a little suss to this islandista. What do you think?

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Rihanna in blackface & Islandistas on I-D cover

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Islandista we're intrigued by: Tracy Quan

Chick-lit loving islandistas may well know of Tracy Quan, even if they haven't heard of her.



That's because Quan, born to Trinidadian parents in the United States (but raised in Canada) is the author-cum-central character of the (in?)famous Diary of a Call Girl series.

In truth and in fact, the central character of the series - Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, Diary of a Jet-Setting Call Girl and Diary of a Married Call Girl - is named Nancy Chan.

But her life so closely parallels Tracy's that it is difficult to see the series as anything but semi-autobiographical. Kind of like V.S. Naipaul (who one  of her character terms "that reactionary coolie' in 'Married Call Girl, but we digress) and 'A House for Mr. Biswas'.

Like Nancy, Tracy is of your typically pelau Trinidadian ancestry - a lot of Chinese with a bit of Indian, African and Dutch thrown in. Her Trini-ness is liberally scattered throughout the books, with references to Naipaul, Mighty Sparrow and wry quips on Trinidad's unique race relations, like the following one:

In Trinidad, people don't make adoring remarks about the mixing of the races. They either take it for granted ot disapprove. My Chinese grandparents disapproved and took it for granted.

Like Nancy, Tracy also worked as a call girl, ran away from home when she was a teen and decided upon her 'career' from a young age. According to her Wikipedia page, she (Tracy) read Xaviera Hollander's Happy Hooker when she was 10 and decided then to become a prostitute, liking the idea of being an independent and self-employed woman.

I kid you not. Like we said, she is an islandista we're intrigued by. Her views are unorthodox to say the least but in her writings she never sounds like she is making excuses for a lifestyle gone awry. She was ... a happy hooker.

Quan herself admits that the lines between Tracy and Nancy are blurred. In her salon.com series which was the launchpad to her eventual best-selling series, she wrote:

I'm unable to give a completely straight answer because, well, I am like Nancy in some ways. Fact and fiction are often blurred in Nancy's life, and in mine. Like Nancy, I ran away from home during my teens, and I know what it's like to take pride in a job while keeping it a secret.

She eventually moved from sex work into writing about sex and the sex industry, first with the salon column, then with her book series. She is now a regular columnist for the UK Guardian and has an enviable writing track record, including Cosmo, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Unlike Nancy though, she is open about her now-former career and has served as a spokesperson for Prostitutes of New York,  (PONY) a sex workers advocacy group.

Her books are a tremendous read, with a lot of detail about the sex industry, layered history of the sex workers advocacy movement and the cliquism and classifications within both. For instance, take this quote from Diary of a Married Call Girl where her character Nancy muses about the social differences between strippers and call girls.

But that's the difference between the topless and bottomless sectors. Dancers and call girls have completely different priorities. For one thing, we're more concerned about appearances. See an elderly billionaire in private? By the hour? No problem. Becoming his thirty-something child bride- now that I would have to explain to my family. What people can see is what's really at stake. As a hooker, you can have sex with multitudes and still be respectable, as long as people don't know. Topless dancers have no privacy. The topless definitions of success, respectability, what's okay, what's not - it's a language I'll never understand.

The hypocrisy of it is hilarious in a way but it is also intriguing to see the thinking that would allow a woman to be comfortable with being a 'working girl' and have it broken down like that.

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Like I said...

In my post of May 15th I commented about the issue of the scrutiny and criticism that many female politicians get over their appearances. At the time I said:

Personally, I think considering that is now established that women are outstripping men professionally, academically and financially, we can finally finish with this foolishness of trying to look like one of the guys to be taken seriously. It is just fine to look like a woman and embrace style and attractive cuts and colours because woman a run tings now more than ever and that trend is only set to continue. So the dictates of professional style should be set by and looked at from a feminine perspective.

Maybe it's just a coincidence but ... look!




I happened across this pic of Barbadian Opposition Leader Mia Mottley this morning when I was surfing the regional papers.

Considering that her look before was more like...



 

This is an interesting change. Though I must say I always prefer natural hair to straightened hair.

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Interesting thoughts on feminism and femininity

I came across this in the UK Guardian a little while ago, in a Q&A with Nancy Dell'Olio (most famous for being the girlfriend of former England football coach and current but-soon-to-be-sacked Manchester City coach Sven Goran Eriksson).

This one comment jumped out at me:


" Are you a feminist?

I am new feminist. New feminists feel we are the same as men, but we have something men do not - our femininity. We are much more powerful than men and that's what women have to realise; that's why men are scared. I want to have equality, but I want to keep my privilege - they have to open the door of my car. I want to use my feminine side. "

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Interesting thoughts on feminism and femininity

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