JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Is wining flirting?

by

20120220

Two Car­ni­vals ago, in the midst of the win­ing at Adam Smith Square in Port-of-Spain, a mid­dle-aged Amer­i­can tourist look­ing on at the lewd cou­pling tak­ing place be­fore him, asked me in be­wil­der­ment, "What are the rules of en­gage­ment?" My an­swer was that I did not know and, in fact, from close ob­ser­va­tion of the street on Car­ni­val days, it would seem that "any dog could play" and all that was need­ed was a strong back and a will­ing bot­tom. There was no prepa­ra­tion for the ac­tion, lit­tle eye con­tact, "come-on glances," smiles, pursed lips, hel­los, com­ments, sug­ges­tive move­ments of the hips, hands or bot­toms, lip-lick­ing or any­thing of the sort. It just sort of seemed to hap­pen. One minute a woman would be sashay­ing by; sud­den­ly a male would jump out of the crowd and cov­er her; vi­o­lent jook­ing to the beat of the mu­sic would take place for around 30 sec­onds, in which both male and fe­male would par­tic­i­pate in si­lence, in­tent­ly look­ing down at the ground. Then they would sep­a­rate, turn around and each go their sep­a­rate ways. Most of the time they did not ap­pear to know each oth­er and in fact they sel­dom seemed to recog­nise the wine. When friend­ship was ac­knowl­edged the wine would of­ten be of a less vi­o­lent na­ture. Af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary leap in­to the air to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the woman and spec­ta­tors and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing scream, "Oh gord gul, yuh look­ing sweet!" the woman might bend over, of­fer­ing her taunt but­tocks (if she had been in the gym for the last six months) for the gent to scram­ble over and af­ter some pelvic thrust­ing, of­ten a gen­tle wine-down to the ground would oc­cur, held for some sec­onds for all to ad­mire and pho­to­graph and sep­a­ra­tion would take place, both par­tic­i­pants re­turn­ing to their re­spec­tive limes to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of hoots and whis­tles, high-fives and ad­mir­ing com­ments from the male friends, smiles and kiss­es from the fe­male par­ty fol­lowed in a num­ber of cas­es by a locked-leg wine with one of her girl friends.

This, of course, is an af­front to any­one who grew up in the fifties or six­ties when flirt­ing was the norm be­fore any re­al phys­i­cal con­tact and there were con­crete rules of en­gage­ment giv­en to you by some rel­a­tive: "Chip to­geth­er but no touch­ing" and hold­ing hands was an ex­er­cise in blus­ter, a kiss was a ve­nial sin and a hip thrust was a mor­tal wound guar­an­teed to put you in­to hell be­fore death it­self. Pre­ced­ing all of these dar­ing events was an en­tire se­ries of sig­nals used to as­sess in­ter­est by the oth­er, known as flirt­ing. Flirt­ing can be de­fined as a play­ful ro­man­tic or sex­u­al over­ture by one per­son to an­oth­er, sub­tly or not, in­di­cat­ing an in­ter­est in a deep­er re­la­tion­ship with the oth­er per­son, and can in­volve ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as body lan­guage. There were no def­i­nite rules when it came to flirt­ing, be­cause every sit­u­a­tion was dif­fer­ent. It was tricky and com­plex and var­ied from cul­ture to cul­ture and Trinidad cul­ture in the past, with its sharp eth­nic dif­fer­ences, made it even more so. Some peo­ple con­fuse flirt­ing with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and vice ver­sa. The most im­por­tant fac­tor here is per­cep­tion and per­cep­tion is a bot­tom­less pit (no pun in­tend­ed). It's sex­u­al ha­rass­ment when it leaves the per­son feel­ing of­fend­ed, de­meaned or vi­o­lat­ed. The bot­tom line is that if the ob­ject of some­one's flir­ta­tion makes it very clear that the flirt­ing is un­wel­come and un­want­ed, but the per­son con­tin­ues to flirt, then he or she is guilty of ha­rass­ment.

Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, flirt­ing comes down to our in­her­ent de­sire to re­pro­duce. When we flirt, we're giv­ing off in­for­ma­tion about how fit we are to pro­cre­ate as well as our health. There are al­so spe­cif­ic as­pects of our ap­pear­ance that make us more at­trac­tive to oth­ers. Some of the "fe­male" signs of flirt­ing, such as an­gling her body and stick­ing out her hips, are at­tempts to draw at­ten­tion to her pelvis and its suit­abil­i­ty for car­ry­ing a child. In ad­di­tion, men tend to be more at­tract­ed to women with a cer­tain hip-to-waist ra­tio: in most coun­tries, the waist must be no more than 60 to 80 per cent of the hip cir­cum­fer­ence. The cor­rect ra­tio is un­known in T&T but there seems to be much re­search dai­ly con­duct­ed in­to these di­men­sions. This ra­tio is al­so an in­di­ca­tion of fer­til­i­ty. When a man makes in­tense eye con­tact and smiles of­ten, he at­tempts to show that he is both vir­ile and de­pend­able. Women are at­tract­ed to promi­nent, square jaws, which are in­dica­tive of a man's pow­er and strength. If he has a loud voice, so much the bet­ter. Fea­tures like square jaws have a con­nec­tion to promi­nent fea­tures in the an­i­mal king­dom. Male pea­cocks at­tract fe­males with their elab­o­rate plumage, male kiskidees scream loud­ly, and stags have large horns. Be­cause these fea­tures re­quire ad­di­tion­al bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources and al­so tend to make these an­i­mals more vis­i­ble to their preda­tors, an im­pres­sive dis­play shows that these an­i­mals are strong. The ques­tion then is: is win­ing flirt­ing?


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored