Raised in the church, my body had never felt like mine to break free in the first place; I was just borrowing it from God. I was told that my body was His temple, that the World would trample on it, and that it was my job to stop it from happening. Sometimes this meant “ugly” piercings and tattoos. Conversely, at other times, it referred to the “indecent” seduction of the opposite (or worse, the same) sex. However, one thing that became abundantly clear is that Carnival was always, without fail, considered shameful. Every summer, my pastor would take his place in the pulpit and spend an hour railing against the diabolical sin fest that was the Caribbean. He would condemn “likkle gyals gyratin’ themselves” as an omen of Satan’s lustful evil, and repeatedly emphasized that “God loved them. He hated what they were doing to their bodies, His temples.”
Throughout my childhood, my parents often made us travel the parade route, pointing out the beautiful costumes and buying us miniature flags to keep as souvenirs. As I got older, the idea of mas became more and more appealing. I started bringing it up in conversations with my mom, and I was always met with the same refrain: “do you think God would be pleased?” That told me all I needed to know. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do; my body wasn’t equal to my choice because it wasn’t my body, after all, right? It was God’s, and if I loved Him (if I loved myself), I would not want to attend Caribana. I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror without being ashamed of my failure to be the perfect temple. My self-image became distorted and dysmorphic, distorting my perceptions of everything about my physical being. Therefore my first mas costume was the beginning of my emancipation.
Carnivals are an expression of independence. Over time, as women continued to make longer strides in society by taking steps toward equality, their role in carnival grew. Costumes became a way to challenge society’s expectations of what women could be. Gone were the afflictions of modesty and self-consciousness; Carnivals became a way to reclaim the female form as being as sexy, flashy and energetic as she wanted to be. The costumes on our bodies allowed our minds to be free—they allowed us to destroy our previous notions of ourselves and reconstruct them through cultural empowerment. Even now, I struggle to find the words that can accurately capture the extent of what I experienced that day. There is a phrase in the West Indies often used in reference to the effect which Carnival has; we call it “self-liberation”.
People dressed in costumes dancing in the sambadrome during the Carnival celebration in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. This is a very famous holiday on the island, visited by thousands of tourists from all over the world who enjoy the music and joy of carnival.Mauro_Repossini
As I moved further along the parade, the anxious thoughts that plagued my arrival faded away. They were replaced by a glowing, rum-soaked audacity that kicked my steps into leaps and bounds to become faster, sexier. There was no judgement, hatred or limitations on what I could do. Emboldened by the rebellious nature of my costume, my body was mine and God was there too. Soca was life, mas was worship and finally I was free. I was baptized in the street that day and reborn as something new. Something extremely imperfect and shameless. Nice though. They belong entirely to themselves.
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