As a child she waded in muddy Philippine rice paddies, now teenager Janicel Lubina struts down runways for the nation’s top designers and is hoping to be crowned among the world’s most beautiful women.
Lubina, aged 19, is a star recruit in one of Manila’s beauty pageant boot camps, where shy, lanky teenage girls from remote farming provinces are transformed into poised Barbie dolls, who can preach about world peace in six-inch heels.
Beauty pageants are hugely popular with women in the Philippines, with many taking part in the hope it will lead to luxury living, success in high fashion and movie stardom.
“My mother was a maid. I can’t be a maid forever and get stuck in the province,” Lubina said before she auditioned for this year’s Binibining Pilipinas (Miss Philippines) contest.
Lubina mastered what is dubbed the “duck walk” at the Kagandahang Flores (Beauty of the Flower) training camp in Manila, where students are taught to perfect their beauty queen strut by swinging their hips from side to side like ducks.
Camp director and duck walk inventor Rodin Gilbert Flores approaches training with the precision of a scientist. He is a licensed chemical engineer and worked for a major glass company before shifting to entertainment.
“It’s is all about muscle memory. It’s calculated down to the movement of the hands,” he said. “The girl should also show her personality. She can’t be like a mannequin with no expression on her face.”
Flores ruthlessly watches as his students, wearing two-piece bikinis and high heels duck walk from one end of a dark covered basketball court to the other.
Sweat drips down their cheeks but they are not allowed to sit down until they perfect it.
“We’ll take in a girl, she will be in pain because of the duck walk, but the end result is she’ll be a head-turner,” he said.
Towering at 1.83m-tall in heels, raven-haired Lubina hopes to represent the nation in the Miss Universe pageant, which has a huge following in the Philippines.
However, Lubina’s camera-ready smile fades when she talks about her struggles back home in Palawan province, where she worked as a maid like her mother, while her father was recovering from a mild stroke.
“One time, I mopped floors for an entire day and my boss made me do it all over again because she didn’t like my work,” she said.
Lubina was discovered by a local make-up artist while she was out on an errand, walking on a dirt road. The beautician was amazed by her towering frame, she said.
She won 3,000 pesos (US$68) in her first pageant three years ago and has never looked back — for her the money has flowed in to the extent that she can support her family and pay for stroke treatment for her father.
Among her most memorable purchases was their family’s first ever television set, which she gave to her parents as a gift after she placed second in a contest in 2013.
“It wasn’t even a flat-screen TV, but it meant so much because my parents used to watch TV in our neighbor’s house... Now they can watch me on TV anytime,” she said.
Flores trained the Philippines’ last two big global pageant winners — Miss International 2013 Bea Rose Santiago and last year’s Miss Earth Jamie Herrell.
In total, the nation’s beauties have won the Miss International competition five times, twice each at Miss Universe and Miss Earth, and once at Miss World.
Local pageant fans are also among the world’s most devoted. In 2010, a YouTube video of four friends going berserk while watching Miss Universe got close to four million views, prompting fast-food chain KFC to put them in one of their TV commercials.
For Miss Philippines 1985, Joyce Burton-Titular, pageants are huge in the nation because Filipinos love to ogle and criticize glamorous women.
“It’s a cultural thing that starts with the admiration of beauty... We also enjoy being mean critics, whether a girl wins or loses,” Titular said.
Titular said pageants could also present an opportunity to escape poverty.
“Pageants these days are a great equalizer because you can come from the poorest of the poor and still win. In our country, pageants are empowering,” she said.
Titular said winning the national pageant 30 years ago gave her the confidence to try a careers in acting and television presenting.
For Herrell, beating 84 other beautiful women for the Miss Earth title last year has led to guest spots in television dance shows.
Unlike Lubina, Herrell comes from a wealthy family that owns a dance studio in Cebu City, a commercial center in the central region. She said she spends her pageant winnings on clothes.
However, Herrell takes her Miss Earth duties seriously, planting as many trees as she can in her home province of Cebu and other deforested areas to raise awareness about environmental issues.
“Pageants are relevant. Women can use them as channels for their advocacy,” she said. “You help the community and be beautiful at the same time, and that’s the tough part.”
Australia has announced an agreement with the tiny Pacific nation Nauru enabling it to send hundreds of immigrants to the barren island. The deal affects more than 220 immigrants in Australia, including some convicted of serious crimes. Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke signed the memorandum of understanding on a visit to Nauru, the government said in a statement on Friday. “It contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” it said. “Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic
‘NEO-NAZIS’: A minister described the rally as ‘spreading hate’ and ‘dividing our communities,’ adding that it had been organized and promoted by far-right groups Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country yesterday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis. “March for Australia” rallies against immigration were held in Sydney, and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s Web site. “Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the Web site said. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.” The group also said it was concerned about culture,
ANGER: Unrest worsened after a taxi driver was killed by a police vehicle on Thursday, as protesters set alight government buildings across the nation Protests worsened overnight across major cities of Indonesia, far beyond the capital, Jakarta, as demonstrators defied Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s call for calm. The most serious unrest was seen in the eastern city of Makassar, while protests also unfolded in Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta. By yesterday morning, crowds had dispersed in Jakarta. Troops patrolled the streets with tactical vehicles and helped civilians clear trash, although smoke was still rising in various protest sites. Three people died and five were injured in Makassar when protesters set fire to the regional parliament building during a plenary session on Friday evening, according to
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
RSS