Is she or isn’t she sexy
Just last week Shelly, aged 36, went out in an ordinary pair of size 16 black trousers and shirt with low-heeled shoes. She wore no makeup and her hair was styled in a natural low Afro. A car stopped and the driver asked her for her hand in marriage.
This is not unusual for Shelly; neither is it unusual for plus sized Gem, who has been begged by total strangers to “continue to take care of her body”. “Big Girl” Kareen declares her total admiration for Jamaican men; on a visit here, one pursued her relentlessly and recently another sent her into spasms of delight when he described her as a sexy Caribbean woman – and meant it with all his heart. Over Labour Day weekend, two men, one a Portmoreian and the other an Elizabethan argued that very point. The guy from Portmore denied liking “fat” women and the man from St Bess held that there was none better as they were “easier to manage”. The man from “cross the waters” later admitted that “too-slim” was not his ideal either.
Are the photo editors of women’s magazines far off in their selections or is it just Jamaican men who find big women sexy?
There are other curious well-known preferences. Some time ago, Conroy was 19 years-old and ready to enter the world of adult romance. His vision of an attractive woman was one whose “hair on her legs lie down flat and nice under her stockings”. Some argue that views such as those above are limited to the “working class” man. One size (2) female journalist disagrees. Keeping skin colour out of the equation for the moment, she claims that the “official look” that many professional men want on their arm would be a trim body, but the sexiness ideal would be three to five sizes larger.
All Woman decided to do some research on this topic. As “life creates art” we looked at enduring and popular works of art and music to form a view on what could be a Jamaican definition of sexy.
If one is to go by the book, Modern Jamaican Art the female form as a thing of beauty and admiration has been ignored by artists. Barrington Watson, in works such as “Conversations”, however, seems to elevate long limbs, wide hips and full bosoms with an upward lilt as being worthy of his brush. We stepped outside the rarified atmosphere of the fine arts and found greater appreciation in the music world.
Soca and calypso album covers by Byron Lee give us lots of coffee and cream complexions and pays closer attention to the derriere than the bust. Even the early rock steady album, “Rock Rock Steady” has a back shot of an ample sized woman dominating the forefront. Dance posters of the 70s – mid 90s showed drawings of slim men with a beer bottle in their hand “bubbling” with big-bodied women. Latter-day dance posters all over town more often than not feature very young women with enhanced backsides, looking more like an advert for a porn show than a party; this goes along with the many local music videos that hire trained dancers and professional models. We would like to think that the video makers are playing copycat to North American culture rather than reflecting our own. Videos shot with real people in Asylum and Hot Mondays reveal that the cameraman’s eye tends to linger on women who are busting out of their clothes.
Purveyor of slackness, Prince Buster, speaks of his ideal as a “fat, fat, girl”, and Jimmy Cliff crowns his ideal Miss Jamaica saying, “although you may not have such a fabulous shape to suit the rest of the world, but you do suit me and that’s all I want to know”.
General Degree tells us that a fine woman “look good in her feather dem” and Capleton endorses this by saying woman must “look good in her clothes”. Buju Banton speaks as much about a woman’s body as he does social struggle; he describes attractive women as those whose bodies can “walk like a champion, talk like a champion”; the song does not reveal whether his champion is also Lorna the “browning”.
Mr Vegas in “Heads High” describes his kind of girl as “bloomin’ like a pretty likkle lily inna de morning” and Chaka Demus and Pliers also take to nature with Maxine who wrote murder but had a face “like a bunch of rose”. Mr Vegas, like many other artistes, expends energy decrying the practice of skin bleaching while being as fresh as a vegetable is important to Tony Rebel.
It is not all doom and gloom for the woman who heeds the diabetic association and keeps her height to weight ratio in check. There are still enough lyricists who prove that men are looking beyond bumpers. Shaggy likes “shorty”, Warrior King speaks highly of his “virtuous woman”, Beres says, his “queen and a lady” is sweeter than a honeycomb and the poet Dingo reminds us that Peaches “she did have a blouse and skirt vibe”.
Names changed to protect the identities of the sexy.
