THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE SQUABBLE over the Miss Jamaica Contest is ridiculous. To me, a beauty contest encourages women to compete with and compare their God-given gifts that are naturally acquired and over which they have no control. How dare anyone compete with facial features and skin colour, features that are acquired through ancestral heritage and God's miracles? It reminds me of the song titled 'God must have spent a little more time on you'. Is that what we are trying to say?
The whole concept is so wrong. How can Jamaica afford a beauty contest when citizens are born, live and die in communities that have never seen piped water, when children's homes are begging for proper facilities, and when people are constantly asking for financial support to treat illnesses, for support in education and to provide facilities to get idlers off the streets?
All the beauty contest sponsorship should be pooled and channelled for more needy causes. Women who think that they need a beauty contest to gain self-confidence and to succeed in life, can easily volunteer their services to the needy without comparing their body parts in gowns and swimsuits.
Intellectual achievements can be judged without demonstration of the flesh, but by succeeding at GSAT, CXC, and achieving tertiary level degrees. Why does a woman who inherits a specially shaped nose, hair quality and skin colour, deserve a free and brand new car, with an expensive wardrobe and thousands of dollars, over the needy or over an academic achiever?
The argument should not be that the wrong contestant was chosen as the winner, but more about why do women need to validate themselves by entering beauty contests when our society cannot even afford to properly educate its people.
I am, etc.,
DR. JENNIFER MAMBY-
ALEXANDER
jensy_ja@yahoo.com
1 Ripon Road
Kingston 5
