Joel Julien

A masked woman wear­ing a gold coloured frilly dress cud­dled a doll in her left arms while she waved a want­ed poster, with In­sp Roger Alexan­der's face on it, as she chipped down Ari­api­ta Av­enue last year.

It was the Wednes­day night be­fore Car­ni­val, and Adams Smith Square in Port-of-Spain was alive with Tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, judges and spec­ta­tors so the masked woman, known as the Ba­by Doll, did not seem out of place.

How­ev­er, the per­son be­hind the mask may be a shock to some.

Be­hind the mask was renowned women's rights ac­tivist Hazel Brown.

Brown, the co­or­di­na­tor of the Net­work of NGOs of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, won the na­tion­al award the Medal for the De­vel­op­ment of Women (Gold) in 2011.

Last year, she al­so re­ceived an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Brown be­lieves that Tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val Char­ac­ters can be used to spread im­por­tant mes­sages that need to be heard.

So what was the mes­sage that Brown was hop­ing to de­liv­er that night she waved the want­ed poster bear­ing Alexan­der's face?

Well, Brown took the Adam Smith Square stage a few weeks af­ter Alexan­der had been re­moved as the host of the Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme fol­low­ing charges of as­sault.

Be­yond the Tape was a pro­gramme by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

"We were look­ing for Alexan­der be­cause he had just been fired from the TV and when he was on he had been putting up the names of the men who had been ow­ing main­te­nance and he had been very ben­e­fi­cial in get­ting war­rants served on some of the men and get­ting main­te­nance for women," Brown said.

"So we were look­ing for Alexan­der be­cause since he was gone that seg­ment of the pro­gramme had dis­ap­peared."

Some ten years ago, the net­work of NGOs de­cid­ed that it would use Tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val Char­ac­ters as "as ad­vo­ca­cy tools in­stead of just writ­ing press re­leas­es", Brown said..

In 2013 Brown's Ba­by Doll pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cused on the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 is­sue.

In 2012 she used the char­ac­ter to ques­tion why a na­tion­al com­mis­sion on women was not es­tab­lished.

"We thought it would be a use­ful way to get our mes­sages across. So we ac­tu­al­ly start­ed train­ing a group of young women through Brown Cot­ton The­atre and Ellen Camps to por­tray the Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, so every year we would have five or six of them par­tic­i­pat­ing in the two com­pe­ti­tions in St James and Port-of-Spain," Brown said.

Brown said she has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­pe­ti­tions for the past six years.

"For us it is more than a com­pe­ti­tion, it is a medi­um that we be­lieve can be used for ad­vo­ca­cy," she said.

"And the Car­ni­val char­ac­ter the Ba­by Doll is the most pow­er­ful one be­cause it deals with is­sues re­lat­ed to women, and their chil­dren, and fa­thers, and main­te­nance, and those kinds of se­ri­ous is­sues can be dealt with in ways that peo­ple can ap­pre­ci­ate and un­der­stand," Brown said.

The Ba­by Doll char­ac­ter is a satir­i­cal por­tray­al of a moth­er with an "il­le­git­i­mate" ba­by.

The mas­quer­ad­er is usu­al­ly por­trayed as a woman, with a frilled dress, gloves, and a bon­net car­ry­ing a doll rep­re­sent­ing the il­le­git­i­mate child.

As part of the por­tray­al the Ba­by Doll usu­al­ly stops male spec­ta­tors, ac­cus­ing them of fa­ther­ing the child.

She then de­mands mon­ey from the new-found “fa­ther” to pay for the child's needs.

"It is not just me there are a lot of young women who come for­ward from time to time to help us to do it and how to go through with the cos­tum­ing and the speech­es and the pre­sen­ta­tion," Brown said.

Brown in­tends to ad­dress the is­sue of sin­gle fa­thers in her pre­sen­ta­tion this year.