Wendy’s much ado
TWELVE YEARS ago, at the end of the first month of the New Year 2006, I wrote a column with the title ‘Wendy’s big do’. It started, “‘I wonder what get into Wendy?’ several people asked me, some rhetorically. It certainly wasn’t Casper, the friendly ghost, I thought to myself, grinning smugly, as well as knowingly.
The Wendy referred to is Wendy Fitzwilliam, the still single Trinidad and Tobago beauty who became Miss Universe in 1998 and who recently broke the news of her pregnancy to a group of schoolgirls at Corpus Christi College, a Catholic school in Trinidad. As the father of four children myself, I think I have a very good idea of what got into Wendy. The real question is, what has Wendy got into?”
For the benefit of those who at that time, and this, lack familiarity with the context, this is Tony’s Big Clue, “The answer is not just bed, specifically the bed of Dr David Panton, who is the party in question, known in Trinidadian as ‘de chile fadder’, and whether he was the party of the first or second part, or if indeed there was a party, is Wendy’s business.
Had Dr Panton been consistent with his surname and kept it as a commandment instead of a patronymic, one assumes that the outcome would have been more difficult, if not different. Perhaps he got misled by the new slogan of the hamburger chain, ‘Do Wendy’s’.
Well, according to the news, Wendy has got into another do, this time what we call a ‘hair-do’. What one paper calls “an aspiring young model”, Gabriella Bernard, who insists her hair is her “identity”, is calling for Wendy’s head.
I could not help shaking my bald head and thinking that if my hair was my identity, I would be lost forever like the 1.1 million people “identified” by the World Bank as trapped in a vicious cycle. Unlike the reaction to what Wendy supposedly said to Ms Bernard that was ‘hair-raising’, I don’t think it is sufficiently potent or long-lasting to replace Minoxidil or Finasteride.
What seems to have happened and caused a much reported response by Ms Bernard, covered widely in many media interviews, a video, and even an editorial in the Trinidad Express, is an ultimatum from Ms Fitzpatrick that the young lady should “straighten” or “relax” her hair or go home.
The incident reportedly took place in Jamaica last year during the recording of the Caribbean Next Top Model competition, which was hosted by Wendy and transmitted in February this year. Wendy is now experiencing a ‘blacklash’ for insisting that the model should straighten her hair or walk off the catwalk and into a plane back to Trinidad.
So why is this emerging now? It is too much to believe that seven months after the show was on television, the sudden resurrection of the issue should be a major social- and traditional-media issue. Ms Bernard now wants an apology from Ms Fitzwilliam for being coerced and deemed “unprofessional” for defending her right to keep her hair natural.
One of the reasons Ms Bernard gave is that she wanted to embrace the “natural beauty and empowerment of black people”. Perhaps it is merely coincidental that a 20-minute short film Black Hair, highlighting “hair shaming” and co-directed by Spanish filmmaker Miquel Galofre and Ms Bernard, was released at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival last Friday and is listed to be screened at festivals in Baltimore, Maryland, and Cameroon.
What I find interesting, especially when it is a view held by Wendy even more tightly than her clinging initially to Mr Panton, was her equating getting ahead in life with getting a head in life. While for some, to quote Mark Anthony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, it is “the most unkindest cut of all”, Ms Fitzpatrick is a jet-setter, lawyer, trend-setter, and role model, especially for Caribbean people, and if she chose to wear an Afro or natural look, as several of my friends have done, if it makes a difference at all, we would want to believe that the impact would be extremely positive and not negative.
While Ms Bernard claims, “We live in a world where the media tell us that we need to have straight hair to be accepted”, I grew up in a rural village long before the media became as ubiquitous or as powerful as they are now.
Yet I remember many of our neighbours heating an iron comb on the coal pot until it got red-hot and then inflicting close to grievous bodily harm on their victims, mostly their children and close relatives, in the process of straightening their hair. The ordeal, while often leading to screams and tears, also generated an easily identified and unforgettable smell that I remember even now, more than 60 years afterwards.
Given her revulsion to losing her identify, Ms Bernard’s answer to the question as to why she did not pack it up and leave Jamaica when this happened is instructive. She felt she had reached too far in the competition to turn back. She was “hoping to win, but I came in third place. You can imagine how disappointing it was making such huge sacrifices, all for nothing.”
In fact, after her hair was relaxed, Ms Bernard actually gushed, “Wow! I look like Wendy.” She now admits, “I decided to fake it. No, I really didn’t think I looked like Wendy, but it was a good line to say.” So what else is she faking?