O14: TRESS, SEYCHELLE CHARITY

[The Honeless Beard]

Name: Seychelle Charity Tress
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Place of Residence: Saint-James, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Language/s: French and English
Hobbies and Interests: Debate Club, Academics, Feminism and Feminist Art, Zines

Appearance: Seychelle is 5’8” and weighs around 155 pounds. Her figure can be best described as rectangular with a distinct lack of curves. The majority of her height is distributed in her legs, making her a quite statuesque figure within her friend group.

As an Afro-Trinbagonian, Seychelle has a deep brown skin with natural curly black hair reaching her shoulders. Seychelle has a heart-shaped face with a noticeable widow’s peak. She has large expressive brown eyes with a pair of perfectly plucked and styled eyebrows. Her nose is slightly up-turned and her lips are a deep rich brown. While she does have slight imperfections on her skin like hyperpigmentation and blemishes, Seychelle adapted her skincare and makeup routine to conceal them.

Seychelle’s ears are pierced. She usually wears studs. She does not have any tattoos or prominent scars.

Her clothing style is simple and efficient. She prefers comfort over fashion, mainly picking clothes based on her days and her activities. Usually, she wears a simple pair of working pants with a graphic tee-shirt. She principally shops at thrift stores but she quite often finds herself attracted to online stores to buy her feminism-related clothes.

On the day of the abduction, Seychelle was wearing a simple white t-shirt with the faces of Ana Zinga Mbande and Joan of Arc with the inscription “RESIST” written between them. She wore a pair of short jeans with a pair of white tennis sneakers. Seychelle wore her hair in dreadlocks in a ponytail with two locks framing her face.

Biography: Born from a Trinidad and Tobago native, Patricia Williams, and an Afro-Trinbagonian, Baptiste Tress, in 2005, Seychelle’s debut in existence was a quiet one. Her parents working in the tourism and entertainment industry, her mother a tour manager and her father an assistant producer, which meant a good - if rocky - income, solidly putting them in the middle class. The family lived in the Saint-James district of Port-of-Spain in a two bedroom apartment.

While the family didn’t have much in their early days, the parents did their absolute best for Seychelle. As a toddler, she was enrolled in several extracurricular activities such as piano lessons, a softball league, and bible study. None of them quite stuck in terms of skills or aptitudes, but Seychelle fondly remembers these activities for the social gatherings.

When Seychelle was enrolled in kindergarten, she thrived as a social butterfly within her circle. As she was quite the popular girl, Seychelle created strong bonds with many people, principally other female students. Some of her current friends, including her best friend Michelle, come from her first year of kindergarten. As she continued through her primary school, Seychelle continued to make friends and achieved decent grades.

However, it wasn’t without hardship. As she grew older, she quickly noticed the disparity between the girls and the boys. As a young girl, the concept of feminism and political activism weren’t quite in her range to comprehend. She still understood the problem, often arguing with her teachers and her classmates about the topic.

Her mother, Patricia, fueled her daughter’s interest by giving her books about important women of history. One of her favorite figures as a child was Joan of Arc. She was quite fascinated by the woman, and how the myth and the truth slowly merged together to become the story it had become today. As she consumed more and more history books, Seychelle’s interest in the general history of the world progressed.

During her final year of primary school, Seychelle’s interest in academics grew. As she studied for her Secondary Entrance Assessment through the practice tests, she realized she actually enjoyed testing herself on her knowledge. Her studies became a source of pride, both from her and her parents. Studying became a habit, and she became engrossed by them. Her social life took a hit, but it was expected due to the pressure of the Secondary Entrance Assessment. The majority of her classmates were also intensely studying to get into the best possible school as possible, the student population often bonded over the pressure.

Her performance excelled her own expectation, placing 17th in the rankings. Deeply proud of this achievement, Seychelle’s competitive nature flared up. Being better than the vast majority of the students of the country made her deeply happy. She became aggressively competitive, aiming to best her fellow students. While this made her quite an intimidating and annoying figure in the student body, some people were attracted to her drive.

Because of her results, Seychelle was enrolled in the Bishop Anstey High School, an all-girls school with a deep reputation in academics and sports. Within her first week of joining, Seychelle joined the House Tamana, a student group, alongside her best friend Michelle. The girls became enthralled by the school atmosphere, quickly becoming involved in the school activities such as the planning of the Carnival and the Annual Bazaar with the older house members.

Her years in high school forged two things within Seychelle: her passion for debate and her feminism. At the start of her second year, Seychelle joined the Debate Club. She deeply enjoyed tearing down people’s points, argumenting her points, but also the bonds she forged with the girls. Despite her deeply competitive nature, Seychelle felt a deep kinship with many of the girls present at the club. Her passion of feminism helped for the Debate Club, always bringing up important points from feminist thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Doris Lessing. Her encyclopedic knowledge on feminism was prized by her peers, another source of pride for Seychelle.

However, Seychelle became actively tired with the performative nature of her own feminism. She became aware of her circle and her privilege, and realized that most people couldn’t think the way she thought because they didn’t have the resources to do so. During her final year of high school, Seychelle started self-publishing a zine alongside her friends from the Debate Club to spread around the district of Saint-James.

The zine was titled Fight like a Girl, abbreviated to FLAG by the members of the group. The majority of the content was image based with collages of different articles written and drawn by the members of the group. It is published about once a week, the zine ranging from a handful of pages to sometimes a dozen. The zine is also published online on social media where the content is spread throughout both Trinidad and Tobago and worldwide. While the readership is small, Seychelle believes that this is a better way to spread the message in the rather conservative population of her city than to continue to spread her message in theory.

Because of her academic and school spirit efforts, Seychelle was elected as the current prefect of the House Tamana. With these duties, Seychelle administrates the activities of the house, planning them in detail with her captain and her assigned teacher. She is intense and quite intimidating as a head figure, often putting quite a bit of pressure on the girls. She thoroughly enjoys the position despite making enemies in the student body. Michelle is currently her right hand woman, the both of them often handling the matters of the house together.

At home, Seychelle principally speaks French with her parents but English with the rest of the world. Seychelle considers French her first language, but most of the content she consumes is in English. She has some knowledge of Antillean Creole, but she doesn’t consider herself a speaker.

As of her final year of secondary school, Seychelle chose to go into the law program of the UWI St. Augustine Faculty of Law. This path was suggested by her mother because of Seychelle’s deep drive for debate and justice, and her high academic results. While Seychelle isn’t sure of the lawyer profession, she still decided to go into it to see if she were to actually enjoy it. Her backup plan is applying to the University of Tobago and Trinidad to study History and maybe Gender Studies to become a teacher at a secondary school.

Seychelle plans on continuing Fight like a Girl in University, but she is also considering starting a new one. Currently, she is considering donating her zine to the younger girls of the Debate Club to assure its continuation within both the school and the city.

Advantages: Seychelle is a deeply competitive young woman, striving to be better than others. She also thrives under pressure, performing better than most under the same amount of stress.
Disadvantages: Seychelle’s competitive and bossy nature can be quite detrimental to the creation of allies. Also, because of her uninterest in physical activities, Seychelle is out of shape.

Designated Number: O14

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Designated Weapon: Multi Calibre Individual Weapon System

Conclusion: What in God’s name is a ‘zine’? What happened to the days when folks just had one name? When did the world stop making sense? - Disco