Jamaica: The Beauty Battle  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Although Long Bench is not a fan of beauty pageants, she finds “some of the criticisms about this year’s selection rather disingenuous and void of basic historical perspective.  To suggest that a light-skinned woman is not authentically Jamaican – ie. is a foreigner – and therefore should not even be in competition with or selected over a dark-skinned (more authentic?) Jamaican woman makes absolutely no sense.”