Roslyn Car­ring­ton

Car­ni­val is free­dom, self-ex­pres­sion, re­lease, beau­ty, sex, mad­ness and mud. And, of course, Car­ni­val is win­ing, that gy­rat­ing, hip-swiv­el­ling, bot­tom-rolling mo­tion that few women not born on this soil can even hope to per­fect.

And Car­ni­val, bless it, is the one time when women of every hue and coloura­tion, every creed, stripe and so­cial stra­ta, can toss aside her sen­si­ble sec­re­tary's pumps, her sur­geon's mask, her welder's gloves, her teacher's red-ink pen and be­come in pub­lic the woman she has on­ly al­lowed her­self to be in pri­vate. Car­ni­val is one big show, and we, the women, are on stage.

But the whole world is watch­ing, and the fur­ther our lib­er­ties stretch, the harsh­er the con­ser­v­a­tive back­lash is like­ly to be. Be­cause make no mis­take, the oth­er 363 days of the year, Trinidad and To­ba­go is as prud­ish and but­toned-down as it is pos­si­ble for a West­ern na­tion to be, and the Sa­van­nah con­course is lit­tered with the ru­ined rep­u­ta­tions of women who have been re­viled, mocked, sanc­tioned, and even fired, for hav­ing been caught win­ing by the wrong per­son...or the wrong cam­era lens.

So, with Car­ni­val up­on us, is a win­ing woman a glo­ry to be­hold, or a Jezebel to be shunned?

Win­ing is nat­ur­al and spon­ta­neous

The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple polled...es­pe­cial­ly men...think that win­ing is not just okay, but an es­sen­tial part of our Mas and our cul­ture. Some even think win­ing is as nat­ur­al as breath­ing for us. "It's cul­tur­al," says one man. "We may call it dif­fer­ent things (church peo­ple praise and dance, but they do NOT WINE, per­ish the thought) but the hip and but­tock move­ments are as much a part of us as is breath­ing. We have to work hard not to swing our hips nat­u­ral­ly."

Win­ing is se­duc­tion

In any Car­ni­val fete, in any Car­ni­val band, you'll find twen­ty woman to one man, at least ac­cord­ing to the re­sults of the sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey con­duct­ed years ago by the re­spect­ed sta­tis­ti­cian, Pro­fes­sor Kitch. So what bet­ter fo­rum in which to en­tice, dis­play and se­duce?

"Win­ing is how we talk to men," says a vet­er­an fe­male Mas play­er, "With­out us­ing our lips. We let the hips talk for us." And the men lis­ten. To them, win­ing is a come-hith­er look that orig­i­nates in the eyes and trav­els down­ward. And even if it goes no fur­ther than that, even if the sear­ing-hot con­tact a woman makes on the dance floor is, to quote one lo­cal po­et, "just a wine", we break apart and step away feel­ing bet­ter about our­selves. We blos­som un­der the warmth of male ad­mi­ra­tion as flow­ers do in the sun.

Is win­ing new?

An­oth­er gen­tle­man ques­tions whether the win­ing phe­nom­e­non has re­al­ly been around as long as we think. "I've seen a lot of footage of peo­ple danc­ing in the streets at Car­ni­val in the 1970s, 60s, and 50s. From none of those videos have I ever seen a woman wine. Dance, sway the hips a bit, yes....but not 'wine'."

If this is so, then the ques­tion aris­es whether the im­pulse to wine was al­ways there, sti­fled by so­cial con­ven­tion, and is on­ly now be­ing giv­en its free­dom to run (or, rather, roll) as the con­straints of so­cial mores re­lax?

"It have wine, and it have WINE"

As much as we ad­mire a good win­er, there is a pre­vail­ing sense that there are lim­its to what is and is not ac­cept­able. There is a gen­er­al sense of "play your Mas, but set your bound­aries." As an­oth­er fe­male Mas lover puts it, "Many Car­ni­vals ago, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to watch a young mas­quer­ad­er wine and dance and en­joy her­self. She went down to the ground and move all around and noth­ing about how she con­duct­ed her­self was lewd or vul­gar. She was en­joy­ing her Mas....then there are those who choose to have sex in the streets and take it to the next lev­el. It is how you car­ry and con­duct your­self."

As far as that goes, un­for­tu­nate­ly, lewd­ness is in the eye of the be­hold­er. What may be a tame lit­tle shim­my for one per­son may be a shame­less dis­play to an­oth­er. It's even more un­for­tu­nate that while women are still be­ing judged by their at­tire and con­duct at Car­ni­val and be­yond, men sel­dom are.

By and large, though, the sight of a win­ing woman, a woman work­ing her cos­tume, en­joy­ing her tem­po­rary es­cape from the rigid bound­aries that bar­ri­cade most of us, a woman who loves to be looked at and, in that mo­ment, knows that she is sexy, and de­sir­able, is a beau­ti­ful thing to be­hold.

The sight of this kind of win­er, cel­e­brat­ing her free­dom and wom­an­hood, rarely evokes shock, and sel­dom gives rise to a neg­a­tive re­ac­tion from her en­thralled au­di­ence. "It doesn't change my view of women," a young man ob­serves. "It ex­tends it. It com­pletes it."