Written by Luanne Grima
There is this idea that in Carnival we dress up as anything we want because everything is acceptable on that day and that nothing can be offensive because it’s only for Carnival celebrations. Others wait for teenagers to dress up as the opposite sex, as people of different races or ethnicity or as anything crazy. Then they accuse them of being homophobic, sexist, racist and culprits of discrimination.
I believe that some things are not to be depicted as a joke because they might hurt people’s feelings and it does fuel anger and frustration but sometimes it is not towards the group of 16-year-olds who are half-drunk and making a statement in the middle of Valletta. The frustration is towards the people who are NOT ignorant and have all the resources needed to educate the general public but have not yet set their priorities straight.
Our expressionism
Carnival can be a colourful and cheerful space to let go and explore perhaps a different part of yourself or something you wish to incorporate or identify with and therefore, dress up as that. It can serve as a week where you don’t feel like you have to do your hair, wear matching clothes or start over if your eyeliner gets smudged. It can be an opportunity to set yourself free and see what that feels like without getting too many judgmental looks.
Carnival is also a time where taboos come to the fore by means of costumes and floats. We don’t really tend to speak about the LGBTIQ community unless an ex-bestfriend just came out as gay and we don’t tend to talk much about what needs to be done in the mental health sector unless a family member gets diagnosed with depression but we shut up when we see an old woman picking up things from the garbage, a man talking to himself on the bus or a seemingly confused teenager who suddenly turns the other way to catch their breath because they can’t deal with their anxiety in front of people right now.
Our controversy
We don’t talk about diversity unless a Maltese waiter behaves rudely as opposed to that Italian guy at the supermarket who helped you out when you dropped your bag but we laugh or we smirk when we see someone wearing dirty, ragged clothes which do not match because they are different, they’re of different color and something must be wrong with them (but of course, it’s okay if you wear that during Carnival).
It is okay, however, to go out with your pajamas during Carnival but – God forbid, the neighbour just went to buy some eggs from the store round the corner with her bed slippers. It is completely normal, however, to see a man wearing a skirt, lipstick, heels and anything else which, in their opinion, depicts a female. And although some of them walk better with their heels than I do, it makes me frustrated that I see the same things over and over again each year which suggests that many people are NOT learning anything about people, especially people in minority groups.
The problem is not the ‘Mount Carmel’ van with ‘crazy sick people’ written on it, but public officials who pretend to be shocked when they are not trying to educate people about mental health. If you treat something as unimportant you cannot expect many people to suddenly start viewing that thing as important.
Are campaigns even effective?
Awareness, acceptance, and tolerance do not simply emerge just because mental health was included in this month’s agenda. How many similar campaigns do we need to come across to start realising that there is something more which needs to be done in order for the message to sink in?
Campaigns are important – they are constant reminders and eye-openers – but we need these things to be incorporated in the education system and implemented as early as possible. A ten-year-old girl obviously giggles if she sees two men with a stroller at the park because she never came across two men with a baby in her schoolbooks. She is accustomed to many white figures, heterosexual couples, and mentally-stable people when she is reading in her English Comprehension class. So, she decides to dress up of something exactly the opposite of that for Carnival, not because she wants to hurt people but because she understands nothing about them.
The irony with awareness
Carnival is a great opportunity for people in power to invest in things that are important and which matter and raise awareness by actually investing in research which normalises people who have been stigmatized in the past. They should really focus on improving our mental health services and of implementing rather than only speaking up when something happens in Malta.
This does not mean that I won’t wear a costume too but I AM aware of discrimination, of diversity and of mental health issues. Some people are not.
