I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., American activist
2006 was a year when we threw a lot of parties and networking. We had ambassador luncheons and dinners and we invited the who’s who from the corporate sector to fine dining events and fine wine which we put together with amazing restaurants and five-star hotels.
I still have a whole cupboard of slinky long gowns that don’t fit me anymore. Both physically and metaphorically. That point of time was my Evita moment – coming out and taking KL by storm. It was my ‘Hey look at me, I am the new kid on the block and I have got this platform and I am going to get you all to come and party with me’.
It was in one of these parties that I met a pageant promoter for the Mrs Malaysia World pageant. She was impressed with my network and insisted I join the pageant. I was flattered but I also knew I was too plump for all that. Well not plump plump but you know, not beauty pageant skinny either. We were all eating and drinking a tad too much while partying too hard to keep very fit.
She insisted. She said they needed someone who could speak good English at an international stage if we won, and it didn’t hurt that I looked pretty OK too.
It was the time that we launched our first English lifestyle publication, Passions, and the only reason I said yes was because I thought winning the pageant would garner a lot of publicity for a lifestyle publication.
The yes certainly changed my life. Well, not in a pageant way as you might think, but it got me into gym. And gymming has been good for me.
I was accelerated to the photography session of the shortlisted grand finalists. It was my first-time meeting all of them. I felt so big around them. They also pointed it out. One of them told me I had a spare tire around my waist and that was basically a wake-up call.
I knew I had to lose a lot of weight, and fast. I had to change my lifestyle. I had one month to do it because that was when we were having the finals.
I hired a trainer and enlisted in a gym and ate very very right. I kept training twice a day and I was still doing my day job of co-running the company. What was the editor-in-chief of a publication house doing taking part in a pageant was a question I hardly asked myself. When people asked the weary and worn out Why? I would reply with Why Not?
I bought a black dress that was simple but showed a lot of cleavage. Well, if I was the biggest there, I might as well flaunt it. The other girls were all as flat as an airplane runway. Well, skinny does have its disadvantages.
I won four of the subsidiary titles out of five. Mrs Body Beautiful, Mrs Photogenic, Mrs Synergy Perfect Beauty and Mrs Popularity. The only one I did not win was Mrs White Skin or something because well, I wasn’t. I was the only girl out of the 11 who was of ethnic Indian origin, the rest were all Chinese and more white skinned than I.
There was a clear favourite to win the pageant – she was really very pretty and had this translucent pearly white skin. She did not speak much English though and I did not speak much Chinese so we did not really speak much to one another.
The Chinese newspapers were centering all the attention on her and lots of interviews were focused on her. The English newspapers interviewed some of the others but it was not much.
It was all such a heady experience for someone like me who was from a totally different world. It was my first introduction to four-inch heels. We were all forced to wear only four-inch heels on stage. I remember giving my choreographer a hard time, because he kept trying to make me walk in a ‘more feminine’ way. However, thanks to him I learnt to walk gracefully with a Marilyn Monroe-esque swagger and to pivot ever so sexily on the catwalk.
When the judges were called to deliberate on the winner, the pageant promoter told me later that someone was shouting out not to let the ‘blackie’ win. Well, that was me, because I was the darkest skinned.
The blackie did win though. The crowd favourite Mrs White Skin went off on a tangent on a pre-prepared answer, irrelevant to the question.
I went on to represent Malaysia in Sochi, Russia with pageant winners from 30 other countries in preparation for Sochi’s Winter Olympics bidding. But that’s another story for another column.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
