Tonga Chronicle

The joy of Heilala

ALONG time ago, the King of Tonga would sit at a beach and watch young women parade be fore him naked. No-one complained.

Now the women parade in bikinis and the country is in uproar.

In a country bound by the strict rules of the Church, Tonga is finding it hard to see the breakdown of the cultural taboos introduced by missionaries in the past century or so. In last month’s Heila la Festival, the much-liked beachwear pa rade was also the most controversial event. It was condemned by the old order as “immoral and untraditional” and that it should be banned from the national festival.

One of the organisers, nightclub prop rietor Tupou ’Ahome’e Faupula, justified the parade as being necessary in the 20th century. “Miss Heilala sometimes have to compete overseas and if they are going to wear swimsuits overseas, they might as well do it here,” she said. Professor Futa Helo, founder of the independent Aten isi Institute, compliments the beachwear parade as “much more democratic, a de sirable development and more in keep ing with the times”. He adds: “They used to take place regularly in ancient Tonga, but only for the King. They were usually conducted at Liku (a remote beach) with the contestants parading naked.”

The controversy, however, failed to

dampen the spirit of the festival which was part of King Taufa’ahau Tupou’s 73rd birthday celebrations. Like last year, the Festival was again won by an expatri ate Tongan, this time good-looking Cali fornian teenager Shirley Beaman. The 16-year-old Beaman is a student at Sac ramento High School. She will represent Tonga at this year’s Miss South Pacific pageant in Apia. Says Beaman: “I didn’t expect to win. I came . . . just to have fun.’ How was it? “I had the greatest difficulty with the tau’olunga but I must have done alright.”

While Heilala continued to provide for the locals the year’s biggest entertain ment event, it seemed to have failed in its attempt to be an attraction for tour ists. For the first time the festival was run by a specially-appointed committee, which included representatives from the Tonga Tourist Association and the Ton ga Visitors’ Bureau. But the tourists didn’t come. Why? One explanation came from Joseph Ramanlal, the Presi dent of the Tonga Tourist Association: “The planes are fully booked at this time because of Tongans returning home for school holidays and Tongans living over seas coming to join in the celebrations.”

The surprise hit of the festival was the Miss Drag Queen contest held at Faupu la’s Ambassador Nightclub. It was so suc cessful that Faupula promised to orga nise a Miss Silver Jubilee Drag Queen in December to coincide with celebrations being planned to mark the 25th

anniversary of King Tupou’s reign. The

success of the Drag Queen night was perhaps due in part to Tonga’s cultural acceptance of homosexuality or fakafefine. In Tonga, like in other Polynesian countries, it is common to have men in the household who act and dress like women. Indeed, so widespread is the convention that in Tonga it is said “every good family has one or two”.

And so on the King’s birthday, July 4, nine fakafefine “sashayed, swayed, saun tered and slinked across the catwalk”, as one observer described. The audience,

cheering and screaming amid beer spills,

included some of the elite of society.

Even the Miss Heilala contestants turned up to see what the other side looked like.

They ended up enjoying the show, which, unlike the women’s beachwear pa rade, was not controversial. □

Tonga Chronicle

Friendly eyes: A Tongan girl dances the tau’olunga.

The right and the wrong: Miss Heilala 1990, Shirley Beaman. Left, with flowers, and right, in bikini.