It blew up on my news­feed. It was all over my Face­book and In­sta­gram. And from the mo­ment I saw it, I felt a rush of eu­pho­ria run through my veins. Nev­er would I have thought that some­thing so sim­ple would leave such a last­ing ef­fect on me or make me ques­tion so many things that per­tain to how we per­ceive the vi­su­als of Car­ni­val.

What could pos­si­bly throw me for a loop? See­ing my col­league Son­ja Pol­lon­ais, plus-size mod­el, and own­er of Clos­et Red Plus Size bou­tique tak­ing full com­mand of the stage, as she re­gal­ly pre­sent­ed the cos­tume Priya, as part of The Lost Tribe’s 2019 pre­sen­ta­tion ‘Taj’.

With every step, every move­ment, she cap­ti­vat­ed the crowd. Cheers and whis­tles were an un­de­ni­able sign that they loved her. Though I on­ly saw a short video of her stage, what I saw in­stilled pride in me as a plus-size woman. I was over the moon, not just for her, but al­so for the fact that such a pres­ti­gious Car­ni­val band would have af­ford­ed her the op­por­tu­ni­ty. At the same time how­ev­er, it raised ques­tions. Why was the idea of a plus size mod­el on stage for a Car­ni­val band such a nov­el­ty? Why have we not seen more of it in our lo­cal land­scape?

Ini­tial­ly, I blamed my lack of see­ing more full-fig­ured women in mas pre­sen­ta­tions on the fact that I’m not re­al­ly in­to Car­ni­val. God alone knows the last time I went to a fete, and I don’t play mas. Ad­mit­ted­ly, once or twice I’ve toyed with idea of play­ing, but nev­er fol­lowed through. The clos­est I came to it was keep­ing my old­er sis­ter com­pa­ny on the road when she played mas with Tribe back in 2008. It’s just nev­er been for me. So, I nev­er re­al­ly fol­lowed the band launch­es or looked at cos­tumes. See­ing Son­ja on stage how­ev­er, changed that ever so slight­ly.

I ac­tive­ly be­gan to mon­i­tor the band launch­es that fol­lowed. I searched a pletho­ra of car­ni­val band web­sites. I vig­or­ous­ly sought out the col­lec­tions of lo­cal and re­gion­al Mon­day we ar de­sign­ers. I scoured as many cor­ners of so­cial me­dia that I could, hop­ing, pray­ing even, that I’d at least see one more im­age of a plus-size woman con­fi­dent­ly don­ning car­ni­val wear for a band or col­lec­tion. Sad to say, I on­ly saw a few, main­ly for Mon­day wear, but oth­er than Son­ja, none for car­ni­val cos­tumes.

I’ve heard per­sons lament that they wish they could see “re­al women” in band launch­es. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fan­cy the term re­al women, be­cause women come in all shapes and sizes. But I un­der­stand it to mean that they wish they could see per­sons on stage who did not have the stereo­typ­i­cal band launch body, or rather, the band launch mod­el size range. If mas is sup­posed to be for every­body (isn’t it?), then why isn’t every­body rep­re­sent­ed when cos­tumes are launched? I know, it would be a bit com­pli­cat­ed to have every sin­gle size, height, and body type rep­re­sent­ed, but at the same time, a lit­tle di­ver­si­ty in the mod­el line-up wouldn’t hurt.

On the Mon­day wear side of things, it is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. I have seen (al­beit a few) col­lec­tions where plus-size women were be­ing used as mod­els. Daniel­la Pe­ters, M&S Cul­ture and J An­gelique in­clud­ed at least one plus or fuller fig­ured woman in their col­lec­tion. And in one in­stance, you have Curvy God­dess by Cher, whose Mon­day Wear col­lec­tion caters specif­i­cal­ly to plus-size women.

Now even with all of this, there are full fig­ured ladies who are not both­ered in the least that they don’t see any bod­ies like theirs show­ing off cos­tumes at band launch­es. They will play mas re­gard­less. But there are al­so those like me, who won­der if plus-sized women are not good enough to be show­cased at the band launch or on the band’s web­site, but the mon­ey in our pock­et is good enough that we get to play mas with the band any­way.

Now, my per­spec­tive on how mas bands view plus-size mas­quer­aders could be a bit warped, I ad­mit that. Es­pe­cial­ly giv­en my own ex­pe­ri­ences where I’ve had de­sign­ers snob­bish­ly state things along the line of “they don’t make clothes for fat women, it’s a waste of cloth”. In the years when I did mod­el lo­cal­ly, I had sev­er­al ex­pe­ri­ences that sur­mount­ed to the same con­clu­sion: plus-size women, fuller-fig­ured women, were not con­sid­ered or catered for when it came to fash­ion and car­ni­val pre­sen­ta­tions.

So see­ing Son­ja in all her glo­ry on stage, gave me some hope. Maybe in the fu­ture, we’ll see more di­ver­si­ty in the bod­ies that por­tray our car­ni­val. Maybe plus-size bod­ies on the run­way in band launch­es will be nor­mal­ized. I want to chal­lenge mas bands and Mon­day Wear de­sign­ers to re­al­ly look at how they can be more in­clu­sive in the fu­ture. Be­cause based on the re­ac­tion that Son­ja re­ceived, di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­siv­i­ty in our car­ni­val vi­su­als is some­thing that peo­ple gen­uine­ly ap­pre­ci­ate. If one mas band could step out of the norm and use a plus-size mod­el, then what’s stop­ping oth­ers?