UN-African? Miss Kenya Is Tall, Lean And Fair - But . . .

NAIROBI - Emily, an 18-year-old working girl, paused over her glass of Tusker beer at the Florida 2000 E discotheque while contemplating a stranger's question about the newly crowned Miss Kenya beauty queen.

"I think they should pick a dark girl from the rural areas," Emily finally said. "A true Kenyan."

Let it be said that this year's Miss Kenya, Nkirote Karimi M'Mbijjiwe, is about as true a Kenyan as they come: a 21-year-old business student from an elite family, the daughter of a politician.

What critics consider un-Kenyan about her, or more specifically un-African, is her look. Like all past Miss Kenya winners - indeed, like almost all of this year's 12 contestants - she is tall and lean with a fair complexion and has a figure approaching a "perfect" 36-24-36.

Pageant organizers hope that look will appeal to an international audience and help Miss Kenya win the upcoming Miss World competition in Puerto Rico. But it is also a very Westernized look that some Kenyans say is not African enough - not dark enough, not full-figured enough - to measure up to what many here, male and female, consider beautiful.

In a country where the government and its opposition are locked in a debate over the political system, where a powerful former cabinet minister has been charged with murder and where foreign-aid donors demand an end to rampant corruption, the tempest over Miss Kenya might be considered mild. But the debate, in bars and on

editorial pages, says a lot about how Africans view themselves and the West, about different cultural views of beauty and about the desirability of Western influences here.

There is another debate that always accompanies the Miss Kenya contest: Should such pageants be held in the first place in a country where women have not yet begun to find equal rights and where the idea of well-bred young ladies parading in bikinis seems antithetical to this inherently conservative society?

This year, however, that debate has been sidetracked by another intriguing question: Should there be something called "an African standard of beauty"?

"There is quite a lot of feeling that there should be an African standard," said Stephen Mwangi, an Eastman Kodak Co. group manager who acted as a judge for this year's Miss Kenya pageant. "The reason is that when our African women go into the international arena, because the Western standard is vigorously used, it becomes difficult for them to make an impact. You must realize that these days we are living in the global village."

Mwangi said that none of the judges ever considered the contestants' skin tone or features but relied instead on "intuition."

"Africa ought to come up with its own beauty pageant, rather than people going all the way to London or other places," he added. "Maybe if we had a Miss Africa judged by Africans, our considerations would become important."

And just what is the African standard? Even on that question, it appears, there is debate, suggesting that in Africa, as everywhere, there is no consensus on what constitutes real beauty.

The Sunday Times newspaper made the following comparison. In an article headlined "Is beauty always in the eyes of the beholder?" the reporter wrote that "in the Western world, the epitome of beauty is a tall, long-legged blond girl with blue eyes and a svelte build. . . . That is why people like Britain's Princess of Wales, Diana, are idolized while her sister-in-law, the Duchess of York, who, though British, is built more like an African woman with generous hips, broad backside and . . . pleasingly plump, is not."

"In Africa, the two royals would be seen the other way around," with the Duchess of York being considered beautiful and Diana "too thin," the article said.