A little over twenty-five years ago when literacy in Guyana exceeded 90 per cent, our daily newspapers carried a Teenager of the Week column and Pin-up Competition. The column was for Guyanese girls and a full length photo of each girl was shown along with her replies to a questionnaire asking what were her hobbies, who were her favourite film stars, writers, singers or songs. What this process did was allow the Guyanese public to access the quality of personal style and intelligence among Guyanese girls. It also allowed the chosen girls to influence other girls, and even guys.

This question should enter our minds: Did every girl who sent in her photo and questionnaire-reply receive publicity? Obviously not. So clearly a standard was sought and achieved by responsible and knowledgeable columnists/editors of our papers. This means that a rapport of quality existed between adults and teenagers. We have evidence of such a rapport because photos and replies chosen for publicity reflect high standards of cultural awareness. When we see reproduced in the Guyana Chronicle in 1964 an elegant photo of a Miss Zorina Bacchus in her late teens reclining in her parents drawing room, on a sofa in a simple but stylist skirt and blouse, and she tells us that her favourite film stars are Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, we cannot fail to miss the point that Miss Bacchus has seen and appreciated highly social and intelligent films which have been verified by an editor’s knowledge of such actors and their films. However, Miss Bacchus could not have achieved this standard without other responsible Guyanese, such as cinema managers back then (Guyana had no TV), allowing her access to such films they showed in their cinemas. Similarly, when Alexis Harris, a young Guyanese model in her late teens during the late 1960’s, tells us in the press and on radio that her favourite classic authors are Dostoyevsky and Guy de Maupassant, we esteem her far beyond her physical beauty and sense of fashion. Another Guyanese model, Shakira Basch, who we saw sitting in the front row at the 2000 Academy Awards in Los Angeles beside her husband, the British actor Michael Caine, was a Georgetown teenage librarian at the first American library in 1960’s Georgetown. There is no question that Shakira consumed some very high-quality literature.

These and many many other teenage Guyanese girls were still in High School or had just finished High School, where like many of today’s local girls they were interested in becoming lawyers, pharmacists, doctors, agriculturalists, librarians, business managers, business owners, etc. Back then shorthand and typing were the equivalents of today’s computer training, it was essential to most of the jobs girls were hired for. But none of these professional ambitions interferred with these girls desire to become cultured persons. Somehow they did not assume that there professional intentions, their intended jobs, were all that mattered, and therefore to pursue studies in such specific directions was the end all and be all of their ambitions. They were not living to function in an allotted slot and simply get paid for it. Somehow many of these girls had realised that the true development of character, or their minds, through acquiring high cultural standards, could be an asset to whatever job they chose, and in fact was essential for the development of themselves as individuals.

Culture is something acquired through enquiry and dedication. We make ourselves cultured. Culture is not something waiting for us to join, or put on. It’s much deeper than that. To wear a certain style of clothing, or style one’s hair a specific way, is not true evidence that one is cultured. Culture is an inner thing, the development of the mind attained and expressed through ideas, emotions, and visual forms conveyed through literature, films, theatre, painting, sculpture, music, fashion, and dance. Guyanese girls, and Guyanese in general, during our pre-independence or colonial days, were placed in a most disciplined position by having to absorb many beneficial ideas and emotional insights from cultural forms they did not create themselves. This meant that the true value of culture which lies in ideas and emotions, in reason and passion, was conveyed to us without seeking a racial identification on our part. It was not the skin colour of film stars, musicians, writers, etc., that mattered, only what human sense they made and communicated to us through their works. Back then the Guyanese mentality was not obsessed or diverted by labels like: “Imported”, “White Colonial”, “Creole”, “Abstract” etc; labels which later became stereotypes obstructing our ability to learn.

Guyanese girls of all races and their mixtures understood that fashion was something they expressed themselves with. They developed and conveyed their personalities with intelligent, but simple arrangements of clothes. If a blouse, a shirt, a skirt, pants, sandals, canvas or flat leather shoe went well with their bodies, they wore it, and it conveyed in a creative manner something about their personalities. An inner sense of themselves was conveyed outwardly. Culture was born from the fundamental and basic encounter between bodies and minds via the process of multi-cultural exposure. Guyanese did not limit their cultural development by identifying only with their specific racial or ancestral heritage. If non-white Guyanese girls liked the songs of white singers like Petula Clark, Paul Anka, Astrud Gilberto, or Tom Jones, or the films of Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson or Sean Connery, it was more likely because of these artists’ creative style and attitude rather than their race or nationality. Similarly if white Guyanese girls liked the songs of black stars like the Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke, or actors like Sidney Poitier, Johnny Nash, Harry Belafonte or Omar Sharif, it was more likely due to their personal style and creative attitude rather than their race and nationality. In either case such appreciation across racial lines contributed to a relaxed social attitude between ordinary Guyanese of racial backgrounds similar to those of the multi-cultural stars admired.

An open-minded attitude is a key player in the cultivation of cultured personalities expressing style and intelligence. When we adopt certain attitudes which limit our pursuit of human knowledge, we cease to grow culturally. This applies to everybody, white and non-white, and in between. Lassitude and pessimism often takes the place of cultural progress. Today we see Guyanese youths seeking to remedy numerous social ills through the aid of church and community work, but prevention is no doubt better than cure. If we look at what cultural standards Guyanese youths were exposed to from the 1970’s back we will encounter a bonanza of cultural values available to them prior to the dictatorial era our society entered in the late 1970’s. Guyanese girls like their male counterparts were largely optimistic in this prior pre-dictatorial era because they took advantage of the opportunities to absorb extremely intelligent films and literature, primarily. This discipline of attention demanded by cultural forms of quality influenced their social behaviour, it also trained their minds to focus on their jobs when at work.

During the 1960’s Guyanese girls and guys of all races limed together on the seawall east and west of Camp Street on Sunday afternoons. We kept our bikes in similar style and dressed with sharp chic precision from head to toe. Every shoe, shirt, belt, trousers, jersey, cologne, cufflinks shirt, blouse, purse, etc was used to make an individual creative statement. We demanded such standards of each other, and you complied, or you could not lime among our group. This attitude ensured that each of us looked at ourselves critically. Our ability to dress well had nothing to do with wealth. Many of us came from struggling families, but because we wanted to make the scene we did errands for tips from family or neighbours, sold used novels we had read, worked part-time during the week etc, to save that money needed to tailor our clothes, or purchase the loafers, espadrilles, Banlon and boat-neck jerseys, peddle-pushers, etc, which we combined on our bodies in order to make a personal fashion statement. Once again adults supported us, because without the wonderful soul and pop music, expressing our upbeat mood and sentiment, played by a caretaker of a sports ground we would have never kept that Sunday afternoon scene on the seawall going. The idea of eating and drinking, and subsequently leaving miss behind on the seawall, was out of the question. We came there to express ourselves through fashion, intellectual and social conversations, and above all amourous pursuits. No one, least of all the girls, wanted to have messy fingers, or mouths filled with coconut water and jelly, chicken, or other snacks. That was deemed inappropriate for such an occasion and would have been promptly shunned.

Style and intelligence was a traditional standard flaunted by Guyanese girls and demanded by them of their male counterparts.