Female Supremacy Articles - Page 21

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Perched on the edge of her sunlounger, the young Jamaican man picks up the woman's hand and lavishes it with kisses. "You is very beautiful, you know that, girl?" he says. The 'girl' giggles as she sips her cocktail. Somewhere in her early 40s, she hardly qualifies for the description. Nor is her beauty strikingly obvious.

Yet the flattery certainly works its magic. As dusk falls, the somewhat mismatched pair can be seen smooching together to a backdrop of pulsating reggae music at a beachfront bar. Yet another example, you may think, of a lonely and vulnerable British divorcee falling for the charms of a silvertongued holiday Romeo.

In fact, on this occasion, it is the woman - 42-year-old Carol, an office administrator from Birmingham - who is in the driving seat. And, as she confides to a girlfriend, there are "plenty more where he came from".

And in case there is any doubt what she is in the Caribbean for, she is more than happy to tell you. She is, she emphasises with a knowing wink: "Just here to have a bit of fun."

She is not the only one. On the seven-mile beachfront which forms the Jamaican resort of Negril, this somewhat unsavoury scene plays out time and again every day. A longfavoured destination for British package tourists drawn to its white sand and turquoise sea, Negril has become the destination of choice for another kind of visitor: the female sex tourist.