MEDIUM RARE
By JULLIE Y. DAZA
Jullie Y. Daza
At last, a beauty with very short hair gets to win and wear the crown.
Miss South Africa, Zozibini Tunzi, Miss Universe 2019, stood out and that’s why she won. She was beautiful, like all the other girls, but not Barbie-beautiful. With color, skin, hair, smiles, a brand all her own, capped by a heartfelt speech. Her crowning glory, which was not tailored for a queen requiring 100 strokes of the brush each night, put her in the spotlight and made all the difference. In a universe of equally beautiful girls all with long flowing tresses in shades of gold, red, and brown, she was a sight to behold, not easily overlooked. When she spoke, you knew she was a winner, using words shorn of adornment to put her message across. In contrast, I’m unable to summarize what our Miss Philippines tried to convey, not her fault but mine.
Miss Universe is the new image of the self-assured woman. Short hair, smart demeanor, simplicity in her choice of words, personality with a capital P and, as our Miss Universe Pia W manifests, confidence. In her fluid column of a gown, Zozibini personified strength. The planet needs strong women, now more than ever. To fight racial and gender prejudice, protect babies and children, preserve earth’s treasures, wage war against addiction, slavery and trafficking. A mouthful that no pageant candidate should ever attempt in one go. Instead, they should learn from our SEAG medalists who say it the way it should be said, straight to the point with feeling sans rehearsed oratory.
Simplicity is likeable in PTV’s news anchor at 9:30 p.m., Catherine Vidal (Vital?), who has suddenly bloomed before our eyes by the simple expedient of pulling her hair away from her face and showing a lovely, gentle set of good bones and soft contours. What a change of hairdo can do! Now all she has to do is ask the scriptwriter to write for television, not a book, by avoiding multisyllables and sticking to short and simple, just like Miss Universe’s hairdo and speech: “I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful.”