Caribbean Queen

This is more that just an 80's pop hit my friends

By CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL

If you happen to visit my room, you will be bombarded by images of Wendy. Yes, 25 year-old Wendy Fitzwilliam, Miss Trinidad & Tobago 1998 and Miss Universe 1998. As much as I ridicule beauty pageants for the sheer folly of its proceedings (parading around, fake smiles, stupid answers) and its problematic ‘politics,’ I rejoiced for Miss Universe 1998. This pageant was revolutionary. Out of about 80 women, the winner was a black girl from my mother’s home – the twin island republic of Trinidad & Tobago, located just off the coast of Venezuela. She was not only a black girl but a dark-skinned black girl, the darkest of all the finalists and, perhaps the darkest Miss Universe ever. She is radiant. Her skin is a tamarind-brown mixed with bronze. When Wendy won the title, the other black contestants nearly toppled over trying to congratulate her. My mother screamed. We in the Bahamas said "Yes," triumphantly. My cousins in Trinidad went out into the road and cheered for their second Miss Universe; the first was Janelle "Penny" Commissiong-Chow, Miss Universe 1977. The whole Caribbean, the whole black Atlantic, celebrated. The moment that she won, everything became soca: "Bacchanal time! Jump and wine! Jump and wine!" (Let me stop before a party breaks out). It was a victory for all. Wendy is bold with it, as bold as her blackness. Indeed, she had to have that kind of fearlessness and audacity to take on what she was up against. My girl Wendy sliced into Eurocentric beauty standards like a machete into a coconut. That is revolution.

It was not only Wendy’s stunning blackness that made her rise above everyone else. There was something else intertwined with her blackness. I’ll call it her Caribbeanness (once more risking essentialism, as with blackness). It is through this spirit of Caribbean-ness that I can identify new Caribbean students without hearing them speak. It is the way that we move, the way that we speak, it is our look. Undoubtedly, this Caribean-ness has something to do with the Sea – it is a way of rhythm, calmness, smoothness, and celebration. Lord knows that we can celebrate, every nation in the Caribbean has a Carnival, a Festival, a Junkanoo! Wendy celebrated us at the pageant – all that is Caribbean. This six-foot tall island girl surged across the stage in a simple, spaghetti-strapped, white gown with the grace of a wave rolling to shore. Even the biased American commentators could not help but be blown (washed) away by her poise. Wendy had the same effect when she sang a few lines of Billie Holiday’s "Them There Eyes." Her small voice had the ease and the allure of a sea breeze. This girl from Diamond Vale, Trinidad, boldly took Lady Day’s jazz song and connected herself with a legacy of Afro-American tradition. That is Pan-Africanism, Dr. Dubois. Wendy showed how the innovation and improvisation in "Them There Eyes" were in Caribbean eyes too. Truly, Caribbean people are a global people, with influences from all over. We are a meeting of worlds. Trinidad, in particular, is a nation "where every creed and race finds an equal place," as its anthem proclaims. For instance, my mother’s heritage is African, East Indian, Amerindian, Spanish, French, and my aunt told me this summer that there is Chinese somewhere in there. Melting pot. Multiculturalism. Blah, blah, blah. The Caribbean always had it; we just never bothered to name it because we already owned it.

Wendy used this Caribbean-ness, with blackness and ‘worldliness’ wrapped up in there like curry in a roti skin, to steal hearts. Yet she stole my heart not only with her beauty, but with her intelligence and initiative. The woman has her business together. She only has one more set of exams to take before she receives her law degree from the University of West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad. Further, Wendy created her own ways of financing her participation in the Miss Universe Pageant. It is ironic that she received so little financial support. Owners of businesses at Trin-City Mall, including my aunt, were some of only a few sponsors. Thus, Wendy put on a fashion show to raise funds for herself. I am just so happy for this Afro-Caribbean woman because her career will skyrocket. Wendy can be anything. She enjoys modeling and she will be a top supermodel (because she looks much better than half of those model girls anyway). She can be an actress. She will eventually be a lawyer and I’m sure that she is quite capable of succeeding in the political arena. She has already been appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador by the UN. Someone even asked her if she will record a jazz CD and her answer was that she’s quite willing to try anything.

Everything about Wendy is wonderful but, of course, not perfect. Like many black women in the beauty business, Wendy wears a faux ponytail (I know it’s weave; everyone knows it’s weave). Despite the revolutionary fire of her black skin, she still had to compromise herself for the Eurocentric world. I hope for the triumph of natural, kinky hair in the beauty Universe someday. I hope for a new direction for the beauty pageant or, preferably, its end. Beauty pageants boldly display the objectification of women and impose vicious Eurocentric beauty standards on ‘people of color’ (to borrow a P.C. American term). But for now we celebrate our Caribbean Queen, Wendy Fitzwilliam, her Caribean-ness, her blackness, her panache, her beauty. She rushed into our lives like the Sea, making us remember what we seemed to have forgotten about ourselves.