August 21, 2009
This is from Gloria Diaz as told to Shawn Yao
PREPARATION
When I joined Bb. Pilipinas, there was no preparation. In fact, I didn’t know that if you won, you’d go to Ms. Universe. You don’t even prepare because during that time, things just seemed to happen. Now, it’s totally different. A lot of it is physical—tallness, long hair, breasts—now a lot is enhanced, they use teeth whitening and wear very tall heels. The contestants during my time, all of them were basically okay. Blonde and blue-eyed or South American, thick hair—Farrah Fawcett style—and then the Asians are totally different.
They couldn’t tell if I was Filipina or Chinese. Some thought I was South American or Puerto Rican. It was who they thought was most representative of everything, but not necessarily very Asian nor very European. I just knew that everyone wanted to stand with the Asians, but I always wanted to stand with the blondes, and I felt I was different.
COMPETITION
Right when you get there, you’ll know it’s a competition. You don’t know that you’re going to win but you don’t want to lose. That’s the kind of feeling I had, but that’s innate. My daughters don’t feel that way; they want to blend in. I told them: “If you blend in, you can’t be number one.”
Our country had never won—we were neophytes. South Americans and Europeans, they knew what a winner had to look like. Filipinos had no idea, and neither did I. We always think that as long as one is beautiful, it is enough. You also had to be taller than the average Filipina. I think you had to be more proportioned; you had the minimum height…the most important thing about me? I was well proportioned.
STANDING OUT
Also, you’re always together, so you always have to be neater than the rest, pay more attention…be nicer and friendlier. You have to realize that the judges are always around so you can never be in a bad mood, look sloppy or cranky. In the days leading up to the pageant, you don’t meet the judges right away. It’s like being in the Araneta Coliseum, rehearsing for 10 days and there are a lot of people walking around and you just know that there are people who count. You can’t sit across the stage and walk sloppily back and forth.
DIET?
You’re 18. There is no 18-year old who diets. But I was very sporty when I was a kid. And gravity hasn’t taken its toll.
DISCRIMINATION
Even then, there’s always some kind of discrimination. In all contests, Asians are always, always dehado. We didn’t stay in nice hotels. Sometimes they don’t invite all of you to those big, sponsored dinners, only half. Then in pictorials they only focus on one or two Asians and majority are blondes, or South Americans. Even now! Donald Trump loves blondes. In fact I was surprised they had one or two blacks thrown in. In all contests there really is discrimination. Even in our country, if one is really dark, maybe unless she’s really pretty, there’s little chance that she’ll win. If she’s fair or light-skinned, there’s a better chance, so you have to find a way to create your own niche.
MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE OTHER CONTESTANTS?
If they look friendly enough. Otherwise, you mind your own business and smile. You sit with them through dinner and maybe the next day but if they’re not nice you move on. You can make friends with as many of the girls as you want, but if you keep making friends, within ten days you won’t really have any close friends. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an Asian, everybody’s around the same age so everybody has something in common. I was friends with my roommate who was Ms. New Zealand. She was so gorgeous—very tall, with red hair and green eyes. I was so shocked she didn’t make it. We were quite close until the day I won.
WALKING
It was scary during the contest because there are always steps, and those steps are always plastic and there was always water. Nobody helps you down. You practice the night before, one in heels, then in your bathing suit, but not in your dress. That’s when you’ll realize how scary those stairs are. Many have fallen there, like Miriam Quiambao, but she picked herself up, she was so brave. You walk slowly.
AFTER WINNING…
…you work. Ms. Universe is really work. You become their possession, their model. From six in the morning you are already told what to do and you do everything they ask you to do. You become a commodity you see? They give you a lot of money, a lot of prizes, which you have to work for.
BEING MISS UNIVERSE, THERE’S…
A lot of flying. Then from the airport straight to wherever, cut a ribbon here, take photos there, pictorials there, dinners…We did a lot of charity work around America and South America. Once, I was sent to Argentina, there was a charity show there called La Campana de Cristal, I remember so well because I liked it. They granted a terminally sick child there a wish. She wanted to meet Ms. Universe because she wanted to be a beauty queen. So they brought me there.
In Brazil, and they asked me, “Do you know Pelé?” I didn’t know who Pelé was. (Apparently they had just won the World Cup. It was the biggest thing!) So the next day, in the front-page it said: “Ms. Universe doesn’t know Pelé”, it was as if I didn’t know God. So they arranged for me to meet Pelé, he was like a hero, which was quite nice. He was in hiding because they just won, and the people would swarm over him. They put him somewhere nobody knew where I met him. They took pictures. It was like a gimmick that I finally met him.
DON’T FORGET TO SMILE
You smile all the time, even if you’re ready to fall asleep. The worst part would be the dinners because they’re always with sponsors, owners of big companies and they’re always old people, they sit there and talk to you and take 100 pictures. But it’s your duty—you have no choice.
I even met the presidents of Uruguay, Paraguay and even Nixon…but for an 18 year old, it’s all very boring. You learn to make small talk. Very boring. I’d rather sit at home or in the hotel and read a magazine. (But then) I ask myself if I would rather be sitting in an office, typing a hundred words a minute or be here? And you know it’s going to end. Just the thought that there’s an ending makes you feel good.
STAYING BEAUTIFUL
You have a lot of help. Clothes come every week and on a certain day you have your hair styled. But you’re 18-years old, you really don’t need that much maintenance, right? They sent me to New York to shop for clothes. Almost every week you go abroad. But it was still very hard work. You cannot just have free clothes, a big allowance, beautiful hotels and just can’t sit back and feel pretty. No, there’s no such thing.
As Ms. Universe sometimes you just wanna die. Mealtimes were erratic. When I crowned the new girl, I was very sick. I had low blood pressure because of the schedule. I came from Japan and by the time I got to America, I was so dizzy, they had to inject me with iron. But it’s good because an 18-year old can take it and it’s a good break-in.
Anything after Ms. Universe is easy.
[image c/o Wikipilipinas]
This article appears in the August ’09 issue of UNO. If you loved this piece, check out the rest of the issue — we have more. Out on news stands!
When: 5:00 PM, August 25 2009
Where: GE Monogram Showroom, Serendra
The battle is joined! Under the tutelage of Chef Laudico (Bistro Filipino) and Chef Raymundo (Five Cows), our very own Atticus King goes up against UNO girl Sarah Gaugler behind the kitchen counter!
To witness this culinary showdown, please send an RSVP to April at april (at) unomagazine.com.ph.
August 18, 2009
Join us this coming September 19 2009 at the Fort Strip, m1nt Bar. For guest list inclusion, please send an email to lri_morales@yahoo.com.
August 15, 2009
Bending over backwards to give us the news, Gretchen Fullido is a welcome sight even when she’s telling us to get ready for heavy weather. At a time when everything is becoming reality TV, this broadcasting siren may be a talking head, but she doesn’t need a Teleprompter to have the first and last say.
Words by Chip Childers
“I guess I’m just passionate about my work. I think that someone who isn’t passionate about this job would rather just jump off a cliff than have to deal with this schedule….” I didn’t need any more convincing from Gretchen Fullido on this point.
Read more…
August 12, 2009
Mythical yet mundane, innocent yet sensual, accessible yet elusive: presenting Ellen Adarna, as you’ve never seen her before.
Words by Luis Katigbak
Illustrations by Lala Gallardo
Ellen is laughing, her laugh reflected in a crowd of bright blue balloons. Ellen is reclining, leaning back on an unusually shaped armchair, kicking her bare white feet up. Ellen is biting her lower lip, and looking at you.
Do you remember when you first saw her? Perhaps you saw her on the cover of a magazine, wearing slightly less clothing than would be polite in public, her little glossy mouth slightly open, her eyes steadily staring straight outwards, not accusing or inviting exactly, but speaking silently of the possibility of contact. But more likely you opened an email or ran a search online, and followed a link; it was like falling through a hole into a world of images, touching down abruptly on a field of thumbnails, each tiny picture a portal to its larger self, picture after picture of Ellen Adarna, a network of tribute, of Ellen to the infinite power.
Ellen Adarna was born and raised in Cebu, but she says “I’ve been in and out of Manila since I was two―my grandma and my parents used to bring me there a lot since we had an office there.” Speaking of family, she has four brothers: “I’m the only girl, I grew up with boys, so pretty much I was more of a boy during my childhood years.” Ellen as a tomboy, Ellen as rough-and-tumble―it is not easy, though definitely fun, to imagine. Her brothers apparently “don’t care at all” about her fame, internet-based or otherwise. “No one in my family cares about it, at all,” she asserts. “It’s a good thing for me ’cause I only do it for fun.”
Last year, she lived in Manila for about five months. She describes the experience as “dramatic,” and will not explain further.
You saw her once, in person. It was at a party in Makati, the launch of the second issue of a fashion and culture magazine. A band was playing; there was an exhibition of clothing designs; she was among the people who were milling around outside the bar. She was smaller than you imagined, and did not have the aura that you always assume famous people possess. You toyed with the idea of introducing yourself then, and had to remind yourself: You don’t know her.
Ellen claims that she’s not into sports. She used to do gymnastics, though, for three years. “At first artistic, then rhythmic gymnastics.” She can still do cartwheels: “That’s the only thing I can do now.” She also used to ice skate. When asked about how she keeps in shape now, she responds gleefully, “I love to dance! That’s my only exercise.”
An excerpt from the July 2009 issue of UNO Magazine. Still available in newsstands, folks!
August 10, 2009
Waking the Dead, Yvette Tan’s first collection of short ficton will be launched on August 15, 2009, 4pm at Powerbooks Megamall. The collection contains published short fiction, some of them award-winning. The book was illustrated by the great, the wonderful, the talented Andrew Drilon.
The Bridge
“It’s magnificent here.”
I could hear the Madame’s voice as I approached the balcony.
“You simply must come over,” she was saying. “I could throw a party and have the crème de la crème of society flown over. It will be magnificent.”
I could see her on the balcony, sitting prettily on one of the garden chairs, talking on a little white telephone with a red hand piece and a clown’s face in the middle where the numbers should be. There was no cord to be seen. It wasn’t connected to anything. My first thought was, has the Madame gone mad?
“I’ve brought him with me,” the Madame continued. “He’s such a dear to be around, though the locals are wary of him.” She paused, then continued, laughing, “But oh the money I save on phone bills!”
I laid out her food, my eyes on her hands, which cradled the phone as if it was a baby. If I could wish for anything in the world, it would be to have hands like hers, skin like hers. I found myself wondering what she would look like without her bouffant and her butterfly-sleeved dresses, without her armor. Would she be like Aling Gloria, at ease in whatever was handed to her, not letting anything, even good fortune, change her ways? Would she be like Nanay, a frail survivor who would do anything for the sake of her family? Or would she be like Ate, who wanted the world to love her, who believed that the key to a good life lay in the beauty she was blessed with, and unconsciously lorded it over everyone else?
“I have to go now,” the Madame was saying. “Talk to you soon.” She turned to me. “Ija,” she said. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s a telephone, Madame,” I said.
“It’s a toy telephone,” the Madame said. “But I can use it as if it were a real one. It’s one of Ronnie’s powers.” She put the phone on the table and took my hand. I shivered as her hands closed over my own, reveling as their smoothness closed over my small rough one. “I can tell you’re like him. What can you do?”
I looked at her. She was staring intently at me, her lovely dark eyes trying to see what was behind mine. Even though all the adults treated me as if I was an older child, the Madame was the first one to talk to me as if I was an adult.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I see and hear things others don’t. I dream things, know things that I shouldn’t know. Sometimes, I know things even before they happen.” This wasn’t a boast. To boast would be to add that sometimes, Mang Ambo, the local albulario, came to me when he had a patient whose sickness was too stubborn to cure, or when he couldn’t reason with the entities that were causing trouble to some of the folks that sought his help. I never liked it when Mang Ambo asked me to talk to them; they were always asking me to go off with them, to travel to a place with no worries, no cares. A place not even the Madame has dreamed of. But even that would not be boasting, because it was all true.
“How do you know these things?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Sometimes, they tell me. Sometimes, I just know.”
“They?”
“Ate Tina and Kuya Chris,” I said. “They were supposed to be my brother and sister, except Ate Tina decided to leave early, and when Kuya Chris came along, he decided to join her. They asked me to come along but I said no, because I knew that Nanay would be sad.”
“I see,” she said absently, as if she already knew the answers but wanted to hear them from me. I remembered snatches of a conversation my parents had, something about the Madame and her husband knowing everything about everyone in the country. “So now you can read minds, predict the future.”
I looked down at my feet, dark from being under the sun and dirty from being in the dust all day. I’m dirtying the Madame’s floor, I thought.
The Madame squeezed my hand. I looked up at her again. She was smiling. “What am I thinking of right now?” she asked.
“The bridge,” I answered.
I felt a jolt, a current that ran through her, up her arms, to her hands and into mine, all crackly blue and green. And then it hit me. What the boy was saying, what he had been trying to tell me.
I pulled my hand away from hers and ran back down to the kitchen, forgetting to take the tray with me.
From his blog, The Age of Brillig
Nonetheless, my favorite ever scene from a Carlo J. Caparas film is a daring bravura setpiece of intense psychological complexity hitherto unseen in Philippine cinema – rivaling the exquisite sophistication of Ophuls or the tolerant humanism of Renoir. It was gifted to us through
The Marita Gonzaga Rape-Slay: In God We Trust!, a deceptive “massacre movie” starring Sunshine Dizon and future Senator Jinggoy Estrada.
There are no words to describe how much Cory Aquino meant to us. So we give you this which was edited and put up by Mike Alcazaren, one of the filmmakers who did the music video of “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo” with Mike de Leon. (The footage of Sen. Tanada being dispersed with water cannons was shot by him as well.)
August 7, 2009
Photo by Shawn Yao
Hair & Make Up by Tatin Yang
To be in awe of the sea, to be aware of its terrible beauty is to acknowledge its violence. It has lead many men to their deaths as much as it’s inspired them. Much like the women we fall in love with—the ones we’d readily take and do damage for—we’re as much in thrall with the prospect of skimming its surface as much as drowning in its depths. It’s no coincidence that Hemingway referred to the sea as a woman.
Consider then Lorraine Lapus—the first Filipina to be certified as a surf instructor in the Philippines. “I caught my first wave alone and I just fell in love on the spot,” she says. Spending most of her time at the Philippine Surfing Academy, working both as an instructor and head-of-marketing at the school, she says she “just love(s) being in the water, soaking in all the wonderful senses that nature provides you. It’s the best feeling being alone and challenging yourself. Alone time is good every now and then.” In the near future, she hopes to own her own little corner of earth and set up camp there. That is, of course, after she’s traveled enough.
August 5, 2009
HIGH SPEEDS, GOOD TIMES AND THE OPEN ROAD: OVER 30 LONGBOARDERS HAVE THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES TRAVELING THROUGH BACOLOD, DUMAGUETE AND CEBU
Article by Jukka Holopainen
“Be ready for the ride of your life!”
More than 30 longboarders from all over the country came together for the first longboarding expedition, spanning 9 days of exploration and traveling through Bacolod, Dumaguete and finally Cebu. The expedition promised to be an adventure: days of free style longboarding, downhill and carving, videos and photography shoots, lunches and siestas, healthy hemp foods and drinks, travel and even more skateboarding. We were set to lead the first documentary expedition to see the country like it had never been seen before.
Read more…
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on FaceBook
