Club Friday Q&A: Tenille Clarke on Celebrating Carnival (and Caribbean) Culture
By Stacy lee kong
Image: Courtesy of Tenille Clarke
I’ve been a fan of Tenille Clarke’s work for years. The Trinidadian publicist and writer has promoted Carnival (and Caribbean) culture and offered smart and thoughtful commentary for more than a decade, most notably with her recent Elle magazine feature on body image during Carnival season. Clarke’s argument—that Trinidad’s carnival is not always a body positive space, and that both commercialization of the festival and sexism can help explain why—clearly resonated, because the story garnered millions of page views and generated tons of online conversation. And for good reason. It was a thoughtful and nuanced look at Trinidad Carnival, which is something that usually doesn’t happen in non-Caribbean publications. As we head into Toronto’s Caribana season, I chatted with Clarke about writing about Caribbean culture for non-Caribbean audiences, the “touchy and layered” topic of commercialization and who mas is actually for, both in the Caribbean and among diaspora communities.
The first question I have to ask is, how did this Elle article even come about?
That's been the question of the day ever since this story dropped. It's not the first time that I'm writing for an international publication. I've done stuff for Essence and things for InStyle. But Elle, it’s in its own fashion league, you know what I mean? So, Danielle [James], who is the digital beauty director at Elle, is Trini. Her parents still live here, and we met through a mutual colleague and friend of mine, Stacy Wyke, who also works in media for the one of the biggest television stations in Trinidad. Danielle is her cousin, and she was like “Ten, my cousin is going to be here and she really wants to meet you.” Now, this is in the middle of a Carnival season and I have work going on, so first time I got to meet Danielle was sitting on a porch at Stacy's house in Woodbrook at 3 a.m.
Danielle has long been an advocate of body positivity in fashion, not just in Carnival, so she's well known on the circuit. When she got appointed the editorial role at Elle, Pat McGrath actually made that announcement for her, so that tells you how big she is on the scene. So, when we met, she said she'd been so longing for an opportunity to welcome people to Trinidad for Carnival, but she wasn’t sure if their body size, or even her body size, would be welcomed in that space. I said, “That's absolutely ridiculous and unfortunate that you feel that way because to me, everybody has a carnival body.” She just pointed at me and she was like, “That's a story.” That's where the headlines for this story came from.
I think I would have the same initial reaction that you did—I have always found it so exciting and empowering to be in a space where I'm surrounded by people, especially women, of all body sizes, all ages, all skin colours. I grew up in a very white city and work in a very white industry, and the people who I see get ahead, or get opportunities, or get attention are often not just white but also thin. So, to be in Caribbean spaces where we're all considered beautiful… I can’t even tell you how important that was, you know? As I was reading, I wasn’t actually surprised because so many people’s experiences felt familiar, but at first the framing did make me pause because for me, Carnival has always been a body positive experience.
As someone who travels often, and who has dual citizenship in Canada and Trinidad, my lived experiences inform what I will tolerate and what I won’t. For me, Toronto has always been the epitome of multiculturalism, but that doesn't absolve it from the challenges that multiculturalism brings; we still do have very acute strains of racism that we deal with in Canada. Same thing for the U.S. Same thing for colourism in the Caribbean, and things of that nature. So, I knew that this story would be important for a lot of different reasons and to a lot of different people. It would be important for the dark-skinned girl who is not accustomed to being photographed when on the road because a photographer will bypass her and go straight to her light-skinned friend, invalidating her experience. It would be important for the curvaceous girl and for the skinny gym-going person who wants that validation as well.
I tried my best to cover as many bases as possible. I feel like my responsibility and my duty as a storyteller is to ensure that publications are held to that standard of authenticity when telling our stories. If you're going to talk about Carnival, we have to get beyond the epidermal aspects of things. Epidermal is great but we have to have the balance because the culture resides in the depths of the experiences we have to dig deeper.
And, I was well aware that that was just the beginning of the story to be told. This story generated millions of hits on Elle.com; I think it was the most popular stories for Q1 of 2023 with great ease because it elicited such a vast response of opinions. So, my hope and my expectation is that this is just the beginning of the stories that l will be able to tell now. This isn’t going to be the last one.
I knew this story did well because it was everywhere on my timelines, but I didn’t realize it was getting millions of hits! When you were writing, did you think about what you would have to explain or translate for a non-Caribbean audience? I ask that because I built my career in Canada at mass market publications—big magazines like Canadian Living, House & Home, Chatelaine—and a big part of what I learned, and what I find I am still unlearning, is to centre whiteness. I learned to envision a white audience when I was writing or editing, and to explain things that audience might not understand. So, I have been making the conscious (and frankly political) choice not to do that in my writing. But at the same time, I really like including context because I want people to go and do more reading, so I'm always trying to walk that line between the political, ‘we don't have to explain everything’ and the practical, ‘but we have to explain some things.’ I'm curious how you navigated that.
Danielle is such a fantastic editor in terms of pointing me in the right direction as it relates to the readership understanding the language and the truth. So, there were a couple of things that we explained. For example, the idea of mas in general. We just gave a very small synopsis of what mas means, so that people got that understanding. But the way the story was written was also as a means of encouragement for people to go off on their own and do the research.
I grew up in the Caribbean, so I don't centre my writing in terms of satisfying whiteness. But what I do want to ensure is that people understand two things. One, the definition of certain things and experiences and two, that I, as a writer and as a storyteller, have the authority to give you this definition. I am the subject matter expert in that regard, and this is me giving you the information with the data to show you why it needs to be presented in this very specific way.
I really that framing—’I'm going to provide this definition so you know what we're working with.’ Because it’s true, all stories need to set some baseline understanding of what we are actually talking about. Did you feel any concern about critiquing Carnival? Because Caribbean culture is rarely treated with this type of depth, this type of sensitivity. In fact, I feel like we're often defending Carnival because people see it not as a spiritual experience or a profound cultural experience, but as something that’s just about sex and sexuality. So, I’m curious if you felt any trepidation around drawing attention to the skimpiness of the costumes, and to the side of Carnival that I feel like we're often pushing back against.
I did not, for a few reasons. Your girl is a research girl. I will research to the ends of the earth; there were many people that weren't included in this actual story, but that I interviewed to gain perspective. I also have great relationships with the Ministry of Tourism, and Tourism Trinidad CEO Carla Cupid definitely ensured that I had the data and the metrics to inform the perspective as well. It's hard to refute storytelling when the facts are there to back it up.
And, I know what we are capable of in the industry in terms of our creative genius. I knew by starting this conversation was only to push us towards creative excellence. That's always my goal when telling these stories. [This story was] not meant to demean or maim ‘Brand Carnival,’ but we also have to hold ourselves to account. I say that as a writer, but also as a publicist as well, because I operate in duality. The goal always has to be, what can we do to make ourselves better? I'm hoping that the story will make us think about others’ lived experiences to make ourselves better. And I think it will. The season for Trinidad Carnival 2024 is upon us and I'm looking forward to seeing what perspectives and considerations [will emerge]. Because nobody can say they didn't see the story.
No, everybody read that story. I also think it’s important that you’re not talking about these issues with Carnival from the outside; it’s not the same as someone parachuting in and critiquing something they don’t understand.
Yes. I have cultural investment in the Carnival experience from a professional and personal standpoint. I've been a publicist for over a decade; I've worked in the music circuits, I've worked in the Carnival circuit, I've worked in the investment circuit, all related to this cultural experience. But from a personal experience perspective, I grew up in East Dry River Port of Spain, and anybody who knows EDR knows that it's one of the poorest communities in Trinidad and Tobago; we lie on the foot of Laventille Hills, and that's where Carnival was born. So my connection to Carnival is a lot more personal and spiritual than that people [may think].
Even if I one day evolve out of publicity or writing, I will always have some form or fashion of stakeholdership in the Carnival experience. But not just for Trinidad and Tobago—after the Elle story, I went on to write a story for Bahamas Carnival. I'm doing things for Grenada. I'm going to be writing a story for Barbados. Every island that has a stake in this Carnival experience is important to me, and it is my job and my responsibility to show the world that even in this small geographical arena of the Caribbean, we have diverse stories to tell. We're not a monolith.
Exactly. I’d also like to talk a bit about commercialization of Caribbean culture. The big question I want to ask you is, who is mas for? Because as you point out in the Elle article, it feels like the scope and scale of the costumes, the skimpiness and the expense of playing mas are combining to target foreign guests more than locals.
Carnival is for the people that have the income to buy into those experiences. But the commercialization of the Carnival experience is always a touchy and very layered topic. I will never say that it's not supposed to be a money-making experience, because the highest order of respect for any industry is for ordinary people to be able to live their lives and to feed their families from these experiences. So, I wouldn’t say it has become too commercialized because people need to make money from it. But what I will say is that space needs to be made for tradition to be honoured. Look at Grenada carnival and how Grenadians will defend to the end the importance of the Jab Jab experience. Look at the Bahamas and the Junkanoo experience. I see the similarities between the Junkanoo masqueraders and tribes from West Africa and their costuming. Look at Trinidad Carnival and Blue Devils J’ouvert. People don't know about going up in the hills [for J’ouvert]. That’s a ritual that happens on Carnival Monday morning and they don't understand the story behind it. That's what I mean about honouring traditionality. Each island has its own specific, unique traits that separates it, and everyone needs to honour that and celebrate that. But we have to celebrate and honour ourselves first, before anybody else around the world can honour and celebrate us.
What would it look like for us to celebrate and honour ourselves? Does that mean making ourselves the target audience?
When I hear about the audiences that we're looking to target, my rebuttal is, are we focused on all of the things or are we focused on the one thing that has become so visible and is being [positioned as] our only viable commercial product within that ecosystem? Because there are so many things happening during the Carnival experiences. We haven’t spoken about the re-enactments of the Canboulay Riots that gave birth to Trinidad Carnival, which are being produced by cultural workers like Attillah Springer and her mother, Dr. Eintou Springer. We haven't spoken about the stick fights that happen in the south, which is a very violent but important aspect of our traditions. Or about pan crawls and people going into the pan yards to watch steelpan bands are rehearsing. We're not talking about Panorama finals. We're not talking about Kiddies Carnival experiences. We're not talking about traditional mas characters: Baby Doll, Midnight Robbers, all these other things.
That's not even touching on the different carnivals in Trinidad that are happening at the same time. We have to decentralize what Trinidad Carnival is about, too, because Port of Spain might be a big aspect and the most visible but Arima Carnival is happening at the same time, San Fernando Carnival is happening at the same time.
And that requires interventions at several levels. It requires government intervention to ensure that the public is informed and involved in the various Carnival experiences, and to ensure that the activities in the ecosystem are not just centred to three months in the year. And people need to step up to the plate and be fully invested in that cultural truth.
Also to your point about investment, if we don't invest in the less commercial and the less sexy and the less splashy parts, that's when we lose the real core of it, right?
Yes. So, we also have to be proud of ourselves, because if we were proud of ourselves and our cultural authenticity, then we would be speaking more about the different aspects of Carnival. Everybody has a stake in this ecosystem, so everybody has a role to play.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about who mas is for in diaspora communities. Whether we're talking about Caribana, or Notting Hill Carnival, or Queens Carnival, sometimes it feels like the tension around commercialization is even greater because they’re happening in spaces of opposition. I mean, Caribana is happening in a white supremacist system, and that’s why as a festival it’s undervalued, it doesn’t get the same kind of investment and there’s not buy-in or acceptance from the city at large. So in some ways, it feels like it's even more urgent to maintain and emphasize and celebrate that cultural centre, but also so much harder.
I think pressure has to come from the outside and the inside. The right players and the right stakeholders just really need to continue advocating for specific things—and I don’t think that’s an impossible feat. I'll give you an example: Barbados Tourism has event experiences to showcase Barbadian culture on a global scale, specifically in Toronto because Canada is one of their biggest tourist markets; a lot of Canadians come to Barbados, so it makes sense for them to be in those spaces. It's important for entities and organizations like that to hold Canadian organizations and boards to account—and to hold their feet to the fire to ensure that we're not just looking at the mas experience just because it is the highest revenue generating experience.
For me, there are two kinds of currencies in that regard: you have the fiscal currency, where people are able to benefit and feed families, but you also have cultural currency, and that is able to feed generations long after we are gone. Our responsibility as a collective is to ensure that this space that we are cultivating, the ecosystem that we are shaping, is in much better shape than when we first met it.
Thank you for reading this week’s Club Friday Q&A! Still looking for intersectional pop culture analysis? Here are a few ways to get more Friday:
💫 Subscribe to the (free) weekly newsletter, or join Club Friday, our paid membership program. Members get early access to Q&As with pop culture experts and Friday merch, as well as other fun perks.
💫 If you’d like to make a one-time donation toward the cost of creating Friday Things, you can donate through Ko-Fi.
💫 Follow Friday on social media. We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and (occasionally) TikTok.