Why do we need beauty contests? Why do we need to compare people with each other on purely superficial terms and on the basis of physical attributes which are mostly an accident of nature?

How is it that most of the beauty queens other than the festival and farm queens look less like the many and more like the few in our 'Out of many, one people' nation? Would The Gleaner please publish the pictures of all the winners of the Miss Universe and Miss World contests since they began so that those with amnesia can see for themselves what others are talking about? This cannot be dismissed as mere negativity.

Intentional or not, a negative message is being sent to the 'many' which affects the self-esteem and self-concept of 'many' young girls and women who resort to bleaching, blonding and other measures to approximate the so-called standard of beauty promoted by beauty contests.

- Hope McNish

hopemcnish@yahoo.com

Narrow-minded Cooper

I was a little disappointed to read the narrow-minded nature of the article, 'Everybody's Miss Jamaica'. I thought we had finally moved from this backward way of thinking. We cannot always allow ourselves to attribute each and every decision to race. You said it well, Jamaica's motto is 'Out of many, one people'. Though the majority population is black, we also have a fair representation of mixed peoples. It is, therefore, no surprise that a beauty pageant would reflect these ideals.

Also, if you look back at the pageant's history, there have been many black winners, who might I add were extremely successful at the Miss World pageant, including Sarah Lawrence, Terri-Karelle Griffith and Yendi Phillipps. But every time a non-black winner is selected, people like you start to cry out oppression, black is beautiful, where do we get our standards of beauty from, etc.

It is not a race issue. And the more we harp on it, the more rigid lines we draw between race and beauty.

It is a parent's responsibility to instil within his or her child that, no matter what, he/she is beautiful. A beauty pageant cannot be blamed.

- Alicia Bogues

aliciabogues@yahoo.com

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Rooting for the poor?

Every day I read about how people of a privileged background are defending the poor in our society, but are they really?

I work for a government-run organisation which froze our salary, cut our benefits significantly, failed to pay us that which was ordered by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal and practises blatant union busting. With all this, the workers are afraid to stand up for what was contractually signed for in the last negotiation. If the Government is turning a blind eye to what is taking place in an organisation for which it is responsible, I wonder what is happening in the private sector?

- Nekisha Mowatt

nekisha_88@yahoo.com