It’s a high-profile international beauty contest, wherein young women from around the world are judged according to standards for the most part established by show business in the United States. It’s bringing a lot of international visitors to Panama, creating substantial business for the hotels and restaurants.

It’s the Miss Universe pageant.

Beyond the brief but welcome boost to the local economy, it can help Panama over the long term if the people who come here have a good time and go home with nice things to say about us. On the other hand, muggings of tourists, police brutality against the foreign press, price gouging by local businesses or other bad experiences can cost us tourist dollars for years to come.

If Panamanians take the competition too seriously, it will hurt us. Yes, Justine Pasek and Stephanie de Roux are foxy, charming and talented young women, proof positive that this country’s white minority has some really good looking members. But Panama’s best looking white women are vastly outnumbered by this country’s equally beautiful mixed race, indigenous and black women and nearly matched by the number of foxy ladies of Asian descent. If the majority of Panamanian girls see all the white beauty queens from Latin American countries with nonwhite majorities and conclude that white is beautiful and since they’re not, they’re not, then it would be a major cultural and psychological tragedy. If our ad agencies and TV networks take the Miss Universe pageant as a vindication of their racist hiring policies, that would also be tragic.

But let’s not take the competition too seriously. It’s just a big party thrown by Donald Trump, with a subsidy from the Panamanian government. It’s a good excuse to clean up our city. It’s an opportunity to show our better side to a lot of foreign visitors.

Miss Universe will not save Panama. She can, however, be the life of a good party. It all depends on our attitude and behavior.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental," you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic," they mean they are going to make money out of it.

Brigid Brophy

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