Beauty and which Beast?

Carolyn Cooper, Contributor

When I saw the title of the talk Cindy Breakspeare was going to give at the University of the West Indies, Mona, two Thursdays ago, I questioned her judgement: 'Beauty and the Beast: A Bridge to the Natural Mystic'. I wondered why Cindy was reviving that tired, old image of herself and Bob Marley after almost four decades.

 In 1976, when she won the Miss World contest, the tabloid press described their affair in those sensational terms. Obviously, she was the beauty and he was the beast.

On February 6, I ran into Cindy at the Bob Marley Museum. We had a good laugh when I mischievously said to her, "I hope you know you're the beast." I was only half-joking. In our sexist culture, the 'outside' woman who allows herself to be seduced by a married man is usually portrayed as a 'leggo beast'. By contrast, the man who strays from the marital home is often seen as the innocent victim of female wiles. He simply could not resist. As Bob Marley himself confesses, "Every need got an ego to feed." It's all about ego gratification. And the male ego seems insatiable.

In the fairy-tale version of the story, the beast really wasn't the monster he appeared to be. He was actually a rather handsome prince who had been turned into a frightening creature because he refused to fall for the sexual tricks of a very bad fairy. The only thing that could restore his humanity was the true love of a sensitive woman who could see past his physical deformities.

It's the same old story. No matter how beastly a man is, he expects to be rescued by Beauty. Ugly women wait in vain to be loved, even by beasts. In the male fantasy world of romance, the heroine absolutely must be beautiful. Not so the man. As the Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta puts it so wickedly in her satirical novel, The Joys of Motherhood: "A woman may be ugly and grow old, but a man is never ugly and never old. He matures with age and is dignified."

BOB LIED TO CINDY

Despite the retro title, Cindy's talk proved to be a most engaging revelation. Completely at ease in her role as storyteller, Cindy skilfully traced her growth from a somewhat lonely childhood in boarding school to the glamour of the world stage. And she recognised the complexity of the relationships she formed along the way. She also alluded to the difficulty of figuring out the difference between Beauty and Beast.

In the question-and-answer period, the issue of how Cindy handled her role as the 'other' woman was raised. As it turns out, Bob lied to Cindy. He told her he wasn't married. That's the kind of thing beasts do. And they expect it will all just work out magically in the end. Apparently, having a wife wasn't good for Bob Marley's image as sexy superstar. So he conveniently forgot about Rita. In public, if not in private.

In my contribution to the discussion, I suggested that there was another way of thinking about the relationship between Bob, Rita and Cindy. It wasn't just a simple question of the 'other' woman in an adulterous affair. Perhaps, it was really a polygamous marriage, West-African style. And, in fact, Cindy stressed the many occasions on which she and Rita joined forces for the greater good.

The important point I neglected to make then is that in traditional cultures of West Africa, polygamy was carefully regulated. The first wife had to give her approval if her husband wished to take a second wife. He could not get married behind her back. Or worse, pretend that he wasn't married at all! Bob clearly was not playing by those old-fashioned rules.

'HAVING A FLING'

Rita Marley's autobiography, No, Woman, No Cry, is a triumphant story full of both tears and laughter. This is how she describes the women Bob entertained at his studio: "Diane [Jobson] and Cindy, like most of the women who hung out at Hope Road, were pretty, brown-skinned, uptown, middle-class characters, having a fling at doing their own thing. So to them Bob was sooo attractive and they were soooo attracted. They all wanted go to bed with him, and he made himself available by starting to sleep there at night."

Rita's survival strategy was to buy her own house in Bull Bay where she did not have to confront all of the confusion at 56 Hope Road. And she made herself available to an attractive, caring Rastaman. Bob had the nerve to try to fight him off! Rita put him in his place: "After all you're doing, you're going to accuse me?" Puss and cock clearly don't have the same luck.

On the other side of the bridge to the Natural Mystic was Bob's wife, Rita. And she's no pushover. She had to be acknowledged. I hope Cindy's frank talk will soon be turned into a book. Like Rita's autobiography, Cindy's story is not just about her own life. These extraordinary women invite us to confront beastly divisions of race, class and gender in Jamaican society. And that's the beauty of their intersecting stories.

Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com