Advertisements reflect a society’s dreams and desires. And though they vary from nation to nation in tone and emphasis, a high proportion of ads everywhere feature nubile women. Sex sells all over the world.

The universal appeal of 16 to 25 year old females is quite understandable, for women at their reproductive peak represent the biological future of the species. Natural man instinctively desires the most fertile available mate. Which is why ‘young gal business’ controls not only Jamaica but every country on earth.

Young men are also at maximum fertility, but are far more biologically dispensable. Only in exceptional situations like epidemics or ethnic cleansing do early male deaths have much effect on posterity. While women can bear only one child a year, one male can impregnate many females. A nation could lose up to 80% of its men and still have a normal birth crop.

The traditional ‘women and children first’ cry on sinking ships derives not so much from romantic sentiment as the recognition that women are genetically more valuable than men and the young have more reproductive potential than the old. Feminists claim there is a bias against women in high risk professions like the military and the police, and they are absolutely right. But the bias is a logical one for any society seeking to maximize its long run biological potential. Every fertile female that dies prematurely is a loss to future generations.

Beauty contests are prime indicators of humanity’s natural fascination with young women. Though condemned by women’s groups as degrading cattle shows and by religious extremists as pornographic displays, they remain popular the world over. Beauty pageants always proliferate when democracy replaces authoritarianism. And there is never a shortage of young women wanting to enter.

In 1976 the Jamaican government replaced ‘demeaning’ traditional beauty pageants with the culturally oriented festival queen contest. But though the festival queen contest is said not to be about beauty, it is also features ‘fertility peak’ women in their late teens and early twenties. Physical attractiveness may not be a completely overriding factor, but it still counts.

Yet the public demand for beauty pageants did not disappear. In fact the market proved big enough for two - ‘Miss Jamaica World’ and ‘Miss Jamaica Universe’. And they draw bigger crowds, offer bigger prizes, and get more publicity than the bathing-suit-less festival queen contest. One reason is that ‘Miss Jamaica’ competes internationally. Miss World 1993 Lisa Hanna is still probably one of the five best known women in the country, along with Merlene Ottey, Portia Simpson, Lady Saw and Carlene the dancehall queen.

While there are exceptions, festival queens are generally darker skinned than beauty queens. And many accuse beauty pageants of propagating a Caucasian concept of beauty, pointing out that in the last four years the Miss Jamaica World winner has been the lightest complexioned entrant.

The promoters and judges deny any preconceived bias and are probably being honest. The forces at work in beauty contests are not individual but societal ones. After all the judges’ verdicts usually agree with the crowd’s. The preponderance of Caucasian featured, light skinned Miss Jamaicas in a mostly black country is not the result of prejudiced adjudicators but history, television, and globalization.

Though Jamaica has made great strides in dealing with them, some psychological effects of slavery and colonialism remain. Four hundred years of oppression do not vanish overnight. But this country has over the years become more willing to confront historical reality and deal with things as they are rather than as some self-chosen elite wishes them to be. No one talks anymore about Jamaicans being unwilling to vote for a black leader. And the young nowadays view their African heritage with pride.

The dominant influence on Jamaica’s attitudes towards physical appearance nowadays is probably television, the most important societal shaping force in the world today. A lot of people spend most of their non-school and non-working hours watching TV. And to many, especially the young, what they see on the screen is as valid and relevant as their everyday reality.

Without a doubt Cable TV has significantly affected Jamaican tastes. Before BET and nightly NBA games rap and basketball had minority followings. Now among youngsters rap outsells dancehall and basketball is more popular than cricket. Since 90% of the faces it shows are white, cable TV has also made the Caucasian concept of beauty stronger than ever. The popularity of ‘bleaching’ seems to have increased considerably with the widespread availability of overseas TV and videos.

But even television itself is only a part of larger social influences. In the globalization era we are all mentally becoming part of one big world – sharing the same tastes, adopting the same habits, thinking the same way. The logical end of this would be a total integration of all aspects of human existence, including physical appearance.

So is it humanity’s destiny to interbreed completely and create a uniformly mixed race? Interestingly Miss World and Miss Universe are no longer predominantly Nordic type blonds. Recent winners have been Indian, Jewish, African and Trinidadian. Perhaps this portends a future where the average person reflects the planet’s racial make-up and is about half Mongoloid, one third Caucasian, one sixth Negroid, and has traces of aborigine and pygmy. In global metropolises like London, New York and Toronto something of the sort is already happening. In London, the world capital of miscegenation, it is estimated that 90% of young black males have non-black partners.

A completely mixed world might be a very good thing. If we all had roughly the same colour and features racial prejudice would be non-existent. But such a development would certainly conflict with human ethnic instincts. For every society is naturally protective of its culture and genetic makeup. And universal interbreeding would unavoidably marginalize the influence of certain groups and societies and cause some to vanish altogether. How does a pygmy feel about the future of his people? changkob@hotmail.com