Judge an Island by Its Magazines?

Based on our opinion, you can tell a lot about an island by the magazines that get distributed to the visitors. Some are all about rental cars outlets and bars, others are about cheap hotels and jungle trips, while others feature overpriced watches, expensive jewelry and jets for rent.

In today’s ‘Lectronic, we’re challening you to guess the island by the cover and some inside photos of Pure, one of the island’s many free magazines.

Yes, we noticed that the woman on the cover has no clothes on. In fact, the publisher of the magazine addressed the issue of the plethora of photos of naked women in his lead editorial:

"Every year people ask me if I am going to fill the pages of Pure with nude women yet again, and every year I promise that this time I won’t. But I can’t help it. I photograph what I see, and what I see is that ‘St. Somewhere’ is a sexy island, one of the most sensual spots in the world. I am pleased to live in a place where people feel free to take off their clothes, and I am proud to celebrate that fact on the cover of the magazine. But nudes are not the only thing that Pure is interested in . . ."

While the last line may sound like a lot baloney, based on the terrific interview in the same issue with the straight-talking President of the island, the editor wasn’t kidding.

The technical quality of photography throughout the magazine is very high, and in the case of the photos of the women, all of whom are locals, they are much more sensual than sexual. And for the protection of Latitude readers, we’ve not included the ones that some residents found to be controversial.

Some will say that such photographs degrade women. But there are two reasons to believe that this might not necessarily be true. First, of all the islands of the 10 countries in the region, ‘St. Somewhere’ is the only island where women can walk safely anywhere at anytime of day and night. And yes, that rules out Antigua. Second, if women want to dress a little saucy for the fun of it, they are showered with compliments instead of insulted by catcalls and whistles.

Naturally, we didn’t come to investigate the relationship between editorial content and islands, but are on a mission for Latitude — to interview one of the world’s biggest skin-flint circumnavigator/cruisers. Expect to see that feature in a future issue of Latitude.

Anyway, your challenge, after carefully examining the evidence, is to guess the island where Pure is distributed. (Update: Thanks for all the guesses. Read February 26’s ‘Lectronic for the answer!)