Thick girls don’t cry

West Indian Day Parade '09 credit: Erica González

The annual West Indian Day Parade in New York City has plenty of bragging rights when it comes to creativity. No feather, sequin or color is spared in the elaborate and competitive costume-making, which is rooted in carnival traditions. But there is something more to this fabulous display of culture and ethnic pride.

Sure, there IS a lot of eye candy: most of the contingents of dancers wear tiny two-piece costumes or are shirtless—a spectacle boosted by all of the wining to soca and dancehall.

There is also a defiance of mainstream images.

Or maybe defiance isn’t the right word. It’s more like an utter dismissal of what’s propagated by the mass media—that is, how too many women, and men, are conditioned to swallow Giselle Bundchen’s shape as the ideal body goal. (I could get into how unrepresentative she is of most Brazilian women.)

Marching down Eastern Parkway were women of all shapes—a few thin, most thick and all heightened by the regality of their headdresses. They are voluptuous Caribbean women of all ages. They are real life women, sans airbrushing, fake boobs, and liposuction.

West Indian Day Parade '09 by Erica González

The wave after wave of women not beholden to Cosmo and Vogue would make some people gag. But I think that’s a projection of the body insecurities we are all made to feel—as in, “how dare she put on that costume when I wouldn’t.”

Caribbean women may be used to celebrating curves, but the pressure, in one form or another, is always there to hide them. So I appreciate the in-your-face boldness of the parade. It should be a wider standard.