With Eman­ci­pa­tion Day just be­ing cel­e­brat­ed, I de­light­ed in wit­ness­ing the ar­ray of Afro­cen­tric fash­ion which con­sumed our soirees and cock­tail func­tions. In­deed, it is an au­to­graph­ic spec­tac­u­lar sol­i­dar­i­ty of style with re­spect to ac­knowl­edg­ing our African her­itage but more than that, it sig­nals the in­flu­ence of not on­ly con­ti­nen­tal African style, the world over, but an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of an emerg­ing Afro-Caribbean style.

Imag­ine that in to­day’s so­ci­ety, breast­feed­ing or nurs­ing as it is com­mon­ly called, an act be­tween moth­er and ba­by that has been around since the be­gin­ning of the hu­man race, one that many health pro­fes­sion­als say has great health ben­e­fits to both moth­er and ba­by, is still not be­ing nor­malised. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the month of Au­gust is de­clared Breast­feed­ing Aware­ness month where many ad­vo­cates take this time to dri­ve cam­paigns to em­pow­er women to com­mit to breast­feed­ing. In the lo­cal land­scape, many women are still bat­tling with is­sues such as not be­ing able to pump milk at the work­place and far worst be­ing looked down on for the sim­ple act of breast­feed­ing in pub­lic, all of which en­cour­ages them to sep­a­rate from this nat­ur­al be­hav­iour and turn to ba­by for­mu­la.

If love is time­less and age should not de­fine a per­son, should con­sent­ing adults be judged on their age pref­er­ences con­cern­ing ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships?

Crys­tal Seu-Yen Thomas has been in­volved in the make­up in­dus­try for the past 15 years. In 2006, dri­ven by her love for make­up, she at­tend­ed Ephraim Hunte’s In­ter­na­tion­al Make­up Acad­e­my. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, she stud­ied cos­me­tol­ogy at the Madame Ma­haraj School Of Cos­me­tol­ogy and even ap­pren­ticed for nu­mer­ous hair­dressers and spas for four years af­ter. Her pas­sion for make­up start­ed when watch­ing Yoko Fung for the first time. When she saw her unique style of make­up, Crys­tal was hooked and won­dered how she too could use make­up to be her ver­sion of unique.

Michelle So­han is no new­com­er to the bak­ing in­dus­try. The in­ter­na­tion­al cake ex­pert is known for her cre­ative de­signs and chirpy per­son­al­i­ty. At any time of day, one can stop off at her Ch­agua­nas busi­ness, Bak­ery Treatz, and meet with the mas­ter bak­er who now has sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al ti­tles un­der her belt. But who ex­act­ly is Michelle So­han and when did she dis­cov­er her great tal­ent?

Re­search in­di­cates that women are twice as like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence a longer du­ra­tion of post trau­mat­ic symp­toms and dis­play more sen­si­tiv­i­ty to stim­uli that re­mind them of a trau­ma. Al­though women are at greater risk for neg­a­tive con­se­quences fol­low­ing trau­mat­ic events, many of­ten hes­i­tate to seek men­tal health treat­ment. Sur­vivors of­ten wait years to re­ceive help, while oth­ers nev­er re­ceive treat­ment at all.

When you see chil­dren at a park or dur­ing the break time at school, they are nat­u­ral­ly ac­tive. How­ev­er, be­tween the heat and the rain, your chil­dren may be spend­ing a lot more of their va­ca­tion in­doors. And they may not be com­plain­ing be­cause they have un­lim­it­ed en­ter­tain­ment on tele­vi­sion, with video games or Youtube. Even if chil­dren want to go out­side to play, it may be dif­fi­cult for busy work­ing par­ents to get out­side with them and un­for­tu­nate­ly many par­ents do not feel com­fort­able al­low­ing chil­dren to roam the neigh­bour­hood as we did in pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.

It is of para­mount im­por­tance for both men and women of all ages to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to their bod­ies. How­ev­er, it has been sta­tis­ti­cal­ly proven that women are do­ing a bet­ter job of this than men. Why is that?

I know that of the 200 plus in­di­vid­u­als who com­ment when I post some­thing sig­nif­i­cant, some have a child or chil­dren in their care. I know that most of them post pic­tures when cel­e­brat­ing their chil­dren’s birth­days or their en­try in­to pri­ma­ry school at the age of five, pass­ing SEA at the age of 11 or when wait­ing on CSEC re­sults at the age of 15 — all mile­stones in the lives of our chil­dren.

My name is Na­dia Lorick. I am a li­censed Zum­ba Fit­ness® In­struc­tor and I spe­cialise in teach­ing com­mu­ni­ty Zum­ba Fit­ness class­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go. I cur­rent­ly host class­es at Ch­agua­nas, Val­sayn, Val­park and Port-of-Spain but I start­ed off in Ch­agua­nas.

Nowa­days we hear the phrase Girl Boss be­ing thrown around a lot. Every­one wants to be a Girl Boss but what does that ac­tu­al­ly mean? The phrase was made pop­u­lar by Nasty­Gal Founder Sophia Amoru­so. Amoru­so de­fines a Girl Boss as “some­one who has big dreams and is will­ing to work hard for them. So be­ing a Girl Boss is re­al­ly about be­ing the boss of your own life. You don’t have to be the boss of any­one else to be a Girl Boss.”

Frankly, I think there are way too many coined la­bels on how we style our­selves. My be­lief is that we are con­di­tioned by sev­er­al in­flu­ences, par­tic­u­lar­ly in this eclec­tic space that is the Caribbean, so we can opt to re­flect any of the myr­i­ad of pos­si­bil­i­ties. What we style on the out­side is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of who we claim to be in­ward­ly. So we can choose to ex­press our­selves, through our style predilec­tions to say who we are, with­out be­ing al­ways in fash­ion or gen­der-sanc­tioned.