SANTA CRUZ: EUROPEAN STYLE SENSUALITY

Latin Americans love beauty! Venezuelans and Colombians regularly sweep the board in the miss world and universe competitions.

Bolivia have their fair share of pretty girls, many of them in Santa Cruz. Beauty pageants and famous models are very popular in the lowlands of Bolivia.

South American girls, especially fair skinned blonds, are trained from young to be beauty queens. They keep a trim figure; wear right clothes; walk the catwalk sensually and flaunt branded products. Its hard not to see western and european physical features dominate judges's perception of beauty in pageants.

Beauty is decidedly euro-centric: Nordic, Latin and Anglo Saxon. Beauty queens with very distinct non european local features almost never win anything. Ever seen a chinese girl with mongoloid features walk the aisle with the miss universe crown? How about dark stubby nosed girls from South India? Some girls from India have been doing relatively well in the past decade or so. Are they the exceptions to the rule? Not so. Take a close look at them. They're tall, fair, possess sharp noses, are from the north, speak very good english - a european language. None of the Indian girls who've done well in pageants have ever violated the canons of european style aesthetics.

Its not surprising therefore if Santa Cruz's babes tend to accentuate their European heritage because pageants have marked out a criteria of beauty that's euro-centric. This is not meant as a put down of local indigenous features but a sober observation of what's happening

Sadly, beauty is also commercialized and vulgarised in Santa Cruz. At a trade fair several years ago, the semi clad buttocks of a female model were compared to a cow's behind! Something crass was said about the model's anatomy. Beauty queens are props; their bodies are hangers for the latest swim suit bikini and revealing dress. Why young ladies allow themselves to be used like meat in a butcher's shop, remains a mystery.