#galleryyuhself/business woman

[galleryyuhself]

Galleryyuhself - Mrs Bhagwansigh passes away. May she rest in peace.

[galleryyuhself]

[galleryyuhself]

~Galleryyuhself~  On World Afro Day, here’s a pic of the first Trini to win a beauty queen competition with an afro: Elicia Irish, in 1971.The 1970 Black Power Revolution changed, among other things, the definition of beauty and the beauty pageant business in T&T. Within a year of the event rocking the country, the organisers of the Jaycees Carnival Queen competition placed the crown on the head of a black woman with an Afro. Although Elicia Irish was only the second black woman to win the Jaycees crown - the first was Pauline Figuera in 1965 - Irish’s 1971 victory symbolised a shift from the dominance of a European aesthetic in defining feminine beauty. For years, the beauty competition had celebrated and idealised the beauty of women of European and mixed-race descent. The Jaycees show maintained the tradition of its the predecessor Carnival Queen competition that had been created by the Trinidad Guardian Celebrations Committee in 1947.Before 1970, few women of colour were chosen as beauty pageant winners.  From the 1950s to the 1970s, the British High Commissioner to Port of Spain was responsible for sending a Miss Trinidad and Tobago winner to the Miss World pageant. The first Miss Trinidad-World, in 1954, was Seeta Indranie Mahabir, a light-skinned beauty who represented the country at the fourth edition of the Miss World competition in London. The failure of dark-skinned to win the beauty queen titles was a constant source of controversy. This was reflected in Attila the Hun’s 1955 calypso Beauty Contest:“ This Guardian competition Is nothing but real discrimination ...”..The Jaycees Carnival Queen competition continued the tradition of upholding white upper and middle class conventions, in contrast to the black and working class aesthetic, promoting a Eurocentric archetype of the ideal woman. The 1970 Black Power Movement revolutionised the psyche of the country that had experienced more that 400 years of colonial rule. In 1971, a black woman was given the Jaycees Carnival Queen crown. Ironically, it was also the final year of Jaycees Carnival Queen competition. Elicia Irish went on to marry Colin Mayers, Barbados’ consul general in Miami.

Taken from the Facebook page of Dominic Kalipersad