the .: fyr :. light

Sometime last week was, apparently, the Miss Universe 2010 pageant. Twitter was a-buzz with it and to some extent so was my Facebook friends list. I have to admit that my interest in beauty contests remains limited to a brief stint back in 1993 when an old high school and music classmate of mine not only secured the Miss Jamaica World title, but went on to win the Miss World title as well.

I have never been a fan of beauty contests. They have always seemed to me to be more along the lines of “noise”.

Let me explain:

There are 2 types of people, those who must have enough noise around them so as to not hear to the silence within themselves, and those who revel in the silence within themselves. There is a smattering of the judgmental in me when I talk about those people who must have noise … and I abashedly admit to being a little judgmental – these are the people who must always have a conversation going at full speed, must always have an agenda of fun-filled activities to fill each day, who don’t know what it is to spend days in the pages of a good book and who despair at quiet candle-lit nights filled with nothing more than staring up at the stars for hours on end.

It is within that circle of persons that I place the whole concept of beauty contests. It’s all “pomp and circumstance” …

it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. ~ (Macbeth)

As usual, this year’s Miss Jamaica Universe contest was filled with debate about whether the undeniably beautiful Yendi Phillips was a true representation of the wider female population of our country. It is a debate that never fails to heat up and in some situations boil over (some of you might remember the ink blots of the Kimberly Mais reign, for example).

And each and every year, the debate incenses me because for the life of me I canNOT imagine why it is that Jamaicans must focus their attention and time and effort on a senseless debate. Beauty contests were not made for you and me. Beauty is subjective, and there is no place on this human-inhabited earth where all opinions are going to coincide. Yendi may be beautiful to you and I, but not to the next person in line. It’s a futile pursuit.

Imagine, instead, all the passion of this particular debate poured into bolstering and assisting the fight against crime and indiscipline in the Jamaican society.

Heady images, aren’t they?

Ha! Pity that is not likely to happen within our lifetimes or those of our children.

I really wish we spent more time and energy on the debate of the efforts for the improvement of ourselves and our society. I wish that all the passion spent in offering up opinions about who is beautiful, and who is represented and what the actual motives of such events and their planners and organizers was better applied in areas that we can actually make a difference.

I’d like to hear more about how people intend to solve the problem of corrupt law enforcement and the fear among civilians to actually do what is right due to an untenable amount of pressure by a criminal element that reigns supreme. I’d like to hear more about how we can stop heavy vehicles from driving through residential and quiet zones. I’d like to hear more about utility price regulation debates.

Who on the world’s stage REALLY cares how many people in the world, or even Jamaica itself, think Yendi is only representative of a small section of the Jamaican society? Don’t you think they care more about the title of one of the most dangerous tourist destinations – true or not, I think that’s a cause better debated – don’t you?

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