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54  Chapter 3 Progress makes a moDel Queen The Birth of Tourism, 1950–1960s in May 1947, the St. Croix Avis reported on events at the organizational meeting for St. Thomas’s new tourist board. With “the complete cooperation of the public ,” the article announced, “a development program of considerable proportions can be instituted.”1 Civic leaders had begun their effort to convince the entire Virgin islands population that tourism would solve the territory’s economic ills, initiating the persistent and persisting theme that all Virgin islanders needed to participate in the island’s “uplift” to ensure collective prosperity. The Virgin islands government, in conjunction with the u.S. department of the interior, developed a strategic economic plan that enlisted islanders’ participation and imagination in a collective effort to improve and modernize the territory ’s infrastructure for tourism. tourism’s discourse of collectivity, of equal participation , impact, and return, may have perpetuated the belief and the practices to which many women of the territory subscribed—that is, that queen shows and other enterprises in which women engaged affected the territory’s material wealth, particularly the business of tourism, while galvanizing local communities. This civic and national improvement benefited from the packaging of the Virgin islands culture, the marketing of its natural resources, and the participation of women’s (and other) civic groups in a number of small yet significant ways. With the development of a tourist board, the shaping of carnival as a tourist attraction, and quotidian island practice elevated to the level of things identifiably “Caribbean,” the eventual restructuring of what had originally been popularity contests for women came to symbolize a new time. The Birth of Tourism 55 during the 1940s and early 1950s, Virgin islands pageants imitated other Caribbean and South american contests, themselves versions of the european model. adapting portions of contests that suited the aesthetics of the organizers , pageants were made up of bits and pieces of borrowed material and style, combined with local tastes and values. u.S. beauty pageants then developed their own appeal to the Virgin islands populace as islanders moved north in search of education and opportunity. in response to the territory’s modernization and newly developed closeness with white and black american aesthetic practices, island pageants became the place where nation, economy, and aesthetics converged in the body of young black female Virgin islanders. black women were beginning to demonstrate an interest in “beauty,” with an eye toward being as fashionable as their white counterparts, not, as some observers have contended, because of self-hatred or a desire to be white. Pageants exemplified the territory’s modernity in both practice and discourse, adopting specific codes of conduct and privileging some aesthetic choices over others. Virgin islanders’ economic and cultural savvy was expressed on stage with the emergence of a new black woman. She grew out of a period of poverty, when economic gain was made to appear a possibility for all Virgin islanders even though prosperity was truly only within reach for a select few. Her appearance followed the path of the islands’ long-standing colonial relationship with european nations, reaching modernity with the identification and marketing of Virgin islands culture as a performance that could be exported for the symbolic taking. as early as 1947, talks were held regarding a board that would oversee the creation of a tourist market in the Virgin islands. When the tourist board really came into its own in 1952, it took steps to smooth the path for the continuation of “progress,” changing the face of island festival practices, the ways in which residents presented themselves to one another, and the ways in which Virgin islanders and the Virgin islands were represented to the outside. The local Virgin Islands Daily News and St. Croix Avis published articles tracking the tourist board’s efforts , including consultations with “experts” from europe and other Caribbean islands and local professionals. all were recruited to advise and direct the territory’s attempts to attract tourists and thereby solve the economic crises that for decades had gripped the area. On november 9, 1948, the Daily News reported that German photographer Fritz Henle had been enlisted to produce a picture book on the Virgin islands that could be used as a marketing tool. Henle’s photographs showed local women in idyllic and typically tropical locations, often with hibiscus flowers in their hair, little makeup, and simple clothing. The volume ignited the colonial imagination with images of alluring, mysterious, simple, and most...

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