THE EDITOR, Sir:
CONGRATULATIONS ON your special feature to mark Jamaica's 49 years of Independence. Since the publication will become part of the archives, I feel constrained to point out an area for correction and clarification in the story "Beauties of Jamaica".
It was stated that the Star newspaper "organised a series of contests for Black, Chinese and Indian women". Not so, Editor Theodore Sealy, being conscious of the complaint that only women of certain skin tone (light/white) were seen as beautiful, orgnaised what he called "Ten Types-One People", a beauty contest for Jamaican women of all shades of skin... Black, Cool Black, Brown, White, Half White, Chinese-full and half, Indian-full blooded and mixed and Middle Eastern types.
He gave each shade a flattering name... ebony, satinwood, golden apple, apple blossom, pomegranate, sandalwood, lotus, jasmine.
The contest caused such a stir that LIFE magazine, then the leading photojournal in the world, sent its chief photographer Phillipe Halsman and a team to cover it. The magazine then featured a two-page centrefold of the winners gathered around the lily pond at Hope Gardens.
Some people feel that Mr. Sealy who spearheaded the organising committee for Independence celebrations, used the concept and the success of the contest theme to influence the choice of the National Motto "Out of Many One People". True or not, the contest served then to debunk the old nonsense about skin colour and beauty.
Regretfully, however, that syndrome is still with us. Forty years into independence who could imagine the bleaching phenomenon of today?
I am etc
BARBARA GLOUDON
