queens!

Unaccustomed to custom queens!

From a Honiara correspondent

This is Miss Custom Queen, Catherine Mandetea, who was selected for the title at the Solomon Islands Fair in Honiara during the visit of Queen Elizabeth in February.

But, in late March, she was the subject of a debate in the BSIP Governing Council after the member for East Guadalcanal, Mr Waita Ben, attacked the fair as nothing but an opportunity for businessmen to make extra profit—an “expatriates’ fun fair” instead of a chance to show the royal visitors the customs of the Solomon Islands.

He said the Custom Queen competition was a public offence because it showed off Melanesian women in front of crowds and it gave businessmen an opportunity to make money by selling pictures of semi-nude girls.

In days gone by the custom punishment for spying on girls dressed like this in the Guadalcanal might have been death. He said Guadalcanal girls had not entered the competition after he had asked them not to.

The exchange in the Governing Council reminded some members of a similar-sounding debate in the Governing Council last November on the “importance of inter-island marriages for a national society”.

Chairman of the Local Government Committee, Solomon Mamaloni, who is noted for his readiness to speak ironically as well as plainly and critically, said during that debate: “Yesterday, the Honourable Member for South Malaita (Emilio Li i Ouou) raised on the adjournment the matter of dress of women m the Solomons, a somewhat popular subject in this chamber. After the adjournment of the sitting yesterday I asked him, ‘Why don’t you want to see girls wearing short dresses or

mini skirts?’ He said to me that he hated to see the part from their knees downwards to their feet.

“I asked him another question, that if he happened to marry a girl from Kwarae (north of Mr Li’i’s electorate) who insists on wearing short dresses or mini skirts what would he do if his wife preferred to wear what clothes she wanted? The Honourable Member said to me that if he saw his wife wearing a mini skirt above her knees and talking to a person wearing long bell bottom trousers in public he would beat her without mercy, “I asked him what for. He said that such a person wearing long bell bottom trousers, talking to his wife, who is wearing a mini skirt, is show ing disrespect and unfairness to his wife in public. He should be wearing a P a ir of shorts exactly the same measurement as his wife’s mini skirt, ‘Equality in status for the sexes’, he said to me very angrily, “I then left the Honourable Mem ber with a very good piece of ad that if he meets girls wearing m i n i skirts in the streets of Honiara he should shut his eyes tight until they pass him. He was very con vinced and went away satisfied.

“Half an hour later, Mr Chair man, on my way to Betikama (near Honiara) I saw the same Honour able Member in front of a shop, holding hands with a girl friend from another island who was wearing a mini skirt about four inches above her knees, and he was not keeping his eyes shut; he was looking the girl up and down and I am sure he must have been contemplating the importance of inter-island marriages for a national society. He sure forgot all about his topic then”.