(Barbados Nation) A high-ranking Catholic cleric, Monsignor Vincent, has condemned young people’s wearing of skimpy clothing and low-hanging trousers, exposing their underwear in public.
The criticism on represented a vote supporting Deputy Prime Minister Freundel Stuart’s hard-hitting speech last Friday about badly-dressed youths and too little “quiet time” in a Barbados some regard as the entertainment capital of the Caribbean.
But Stuart also faced some fire over his too-much-entertainment charge.
Monsignor Vincent, picnicking on the East Coast on Monday, described Stuart’s comments as accurate, adding that he wished church leaders would have been more outspoken on these social problems.
He told the Daily Nation young women were as guilty of offending standards of decency regarding dress as the youths whom Stuart said were “wearing their pants nearly off”.
“There are some young women as well who dress ridiculously,” he complained. “You see them coming to funerals and other gatherings dressed in this way.
“The men are exposing themselves below (the waist) and the young women are exposing above . . . as much skin as they can. We need to adopt a proper dress code.”
The priest agreed with Stuart that the heavy entertainment schedule was making Barbados “extremely noisy”.
“I love music and I like a good party, but when partying becomes an everyday thing, that is not good for a society.” He called for the creation of some places in Barbados “where there will be absolutely no noise”.
However, musician/ teacher Roger Gittens told the Daily Nation that while he had some concerns about the entertainment industry, Stuart was not helping by focusing criticism on a narrow section.
“It has to be a whole focus, and those one-off comments made because you aren’t looking at one thing are real myopic as far as I am concerned,” he said.
“Instead of criticising here and criticising there, let us see if we can look for the solutions.”
Gittens said he thought the noise people complained about “is associated with the jump-up music”.
He spoke of the need for the entertainment industry to broaden its offerings.
“I think that there is an over-emphasis on the revelry, the carnival type of entertainment. We need to look at gospel. We need to look at classical music. We need to look at some of the things that youth orchestras and smaller groups are doing.”
Entertainment entrepreneur Peter Boyce accused Stuart of painting the entertainment industry as ugly and of seeing Barbados being the entertainment capital of the region as “a disgusting and negative thing”.
Government, he said, itself was sending mixed signals to an important industry whose big names it had repeatedly praised.
“One minute Government is bigging up the Rihannas, Hal Lintons and Shontelles and talking about ‘exporting our unique cultural product to the world’, the next we are a ‘ugly’ and ‘worrisome’ industry. Which is it?” he asked.