- FILE
Raquel Wright, Miss Jamaica Universe 2005.
Alicia Roache, Staff Reporter
RAQUEL WRIGHT is not just living her dream. She is on a roll.
After winning the Miss Jamaica Universe 2005 pageant, 23 year-old Raquel represented Jamaica at the international pageant in Bangkok, Thailand on May 31.
Raquel did not place in the finals or the semis, but she believes she is a winner nonetheless.
"I refuse to look at myself as a loser. I refuse, because I did a really great job as Miss Universe," she said in an interview at The Sunday Gleaner's offices recently. "Even though I didn't place or didn't win, I know that I'm a winner and I know that I went there with a goal and I know that I achieved that goal and more."
That goal, she says, was to be a great representative for the country. "I think that I did a really good job in selling Jamaica," she said. "For me it was never all about winning. I had a greater agenda. And yes, it would have been very nice to place or even win, but to me it was so much more important to go and represent Jamaica to the best of my ability and to really leave an imprint on people's minds."
EFFERVESCENT PERSONALITY
That shouldn't have been such a stretch. Raquel's personality effervesces and Jamaica's reputation preceded her.
She says she was overwhelmed when, while on a parade in Thailand, children shouted for her and acknowledged 'Jamaica'.
"Nobody knows Antigua and Barbuda, but everywhere you go, people are like 'Jamaica, Jamaica'," Raquel says her roommate, Miss Antigua and Barbuda, Shermain Jeremy (with whom she has become good friends) joked at one time.
But Raquel has also made an impression of her own. She has copped a contract with high-end hair-care brand Farouk Systems, the official hair-care line of the Miss Universe Pageant this year. The deal had her in Los Angeles two days after the coronation of Miss Canada, 23 year-old Natalie Glebov, as Miss Universe 2005.
Raquel is the new face of the 'Deep Brilliance' line of Farouk's hair-care and hair-colour systems. "I went to LA for 10 days, came back home and then flew to Palm Springs (California) for four days to do the photo shoot."
A 'DIVA'
That shoot transformed Raquel into what she calls a 'diva' - with blonde hair no less. "It was different, but definitely like a glammed-up look," she says. "It was fun."
But that fun understandably lasted as long as it took to colour her hair black again.
"You need to dye my hair black," she recalls telling the stylists who encouraged her to keep the blonde look. "Miss Jamaica is not going to go home looking ... blonde. It was great, but I think it was definitely too loud, you know, for a position like this," she says in one of her brief moments of recline.
She speaks animatedly about the pageant and about the wealth of opportunities that became available there.
"Miss Universe is an amazing place to network, because you're meeting CEOs and presidents of the best companies all over the world and it doesn't necessarily have to be limited to modelling or fashion."
Raquel obviously had fun, but also got a chance to see herself in comparison to other women and understand the image of Jamaica internationally.
"(I was) unlike other women who were there who I think fabricated their personality. It took away from their opportunity and how much fun they could have because they were busy trying to be somebody who they were not."
APETITE FOR COMMUNICATION
Raquel's exposure at the pageant has also whetted her appetite for a career in communications. While at the pageant, Raquel created a kind of mock talk show called 'The Universe Group'. "I would walk around with a water bottle and interview all the contestants," she explains. This proved a great stress reliever for intense 13-hour days and after 10 hours of rehearsals daily. ('Everything had to be perfect," she comments.) "It started out as a joke, just to get people relaxed, and they loved it," she said.
"You know law is still definitely an interest, but I'm really, really, really, really liking communications. I realise that I'm a natural at it, especially on TV. I like being on camera."
Raquel has been accepted to the master's programme to study communications at her alma mater, Ithaca College in Canada, and also to a law programme at The University of Buckingham School of Law, England. Both courses have been deferred for a year. "I can safely say if I got into communications, I would be cool with that. I really, really enjoy it."
Raquel has an unbridled excitement about Jamaica that is only balanced by a desire for activism. "It is just amazing to me that we lack so much vision; we lack the capability to understand how much potential we have to be the most important and biggest island in the world, not only the Caribbean," she passionately posits.
Raquel would like to work with other beauty queens like Tonoya Toyloy (Miss Jamaica World 2004) on various projects, among them HIV/AIDS awareness and another of her passions, political education.
"We are already the powerhouse of the Caribbean in everything. And it takes other people to recognise that and appreciate us for that. It's very disheartening that we can't do that."
"I think that if we could only have that sense of national pride and realise that we are all in this together. Let's deliver what the world expects and knows of us and what we're capable of doing," she says.
And though she did not win on that day in May, Raquel says she was, and still is, "proud at all times to be Jamaican".
