Australian Miss Philippines Wins American Miss Universe Pageant

Christmas keeps coming early for the Philippines.  First it was the acquittal of Bong Revilla, then it was the return of the Balangiga Bells, and now it's the crowning of Miss Philippines Catriona Gray as the new Miss Universe. 

What a string of good fortune for the Philippines. Enough good cheer to make one forget about the slumping economy, the corrupt politicians, the extorting cops, clogged Manila Bay, the communist and Islamic insurgencies, and the on-going drug war.

Two out of three of those events, the return of the bells and the crowning of Catriona Gray, would not have been possible without the USA. It is the USA who took the bells as spoils of war, set them up as monuments to the war dead, and then wilfully desecrated those monuments and the memory of the dead by returning the bells as a show of friendship and goodwill to the Philippines. Likewise the Miss Universe pageant is owned by the Miss Universe Organisation which is an American company once owned by current US president Donald Trump.  

Catriona Gray is a rare bird in that she is perhaps the very first Miss Universe who is also a nerd.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/12/18/1877910/shades-gray-nerd-musician-black-belter

“I can sing in my head and rearrange the tune of a song, note per note. I am a nerd,” she told The STAR in an interview. 

The 24-year-old beauty queen finished a diploma course in Music Theory at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, reportedly the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. 

“My course is about really working on a sheet of music. You work out the chords, which note complements the other and how they will make the feeling of tension, the feeling of resolution,” she said. “It’s all about harmonization. That’s more of the theory of notation and everything rather than practical. I don’t play any instrument.”

Her being a nerd was developed at home, in Queensland, Australia. Her Filipino mother Normita Ragas Magnayon, originally from Oas, Albay, taught her to read long before she entered school. 

“I loved school as a kid. I was a bit of a nerd. I took two Science and two Math subjects (per grade level). I loved numbers from a very young age. I feel like my mom led me there because instead of giving me Game Boy and PlayStations and a TV set, she gave me educational software on our family computer for Math and stuff,” Catriona said. 

“By the time I went to school, I already knew the fundamentals and as a child, when you have that confidence, you can only get better. I felt very confident on all subjects. I already knew how to read before I went to school,” she added. 

Her Australian father Ian Gray, a retired civil engineer, “also taught me about life.” 

“My dad is 20 years older than my mom. Growing up, I felt like he knew everything. I felt like for every question I had, he had an answer. ‘The longest journey starts with a single step.’ He used to tell me that,” she said.

An only child, Catriona grew up very close to her parents. “Growing up in Australia, I didn’t have any relatives nearby. My relatives would either be in the States or in the Philippines, also in Germany. So, I was just really close to my parents and actually I moved around a lot when I was very young. I think it played a big part in making me the shy teenager that I was. We would move places. I was born in Cairns, Queensland. We moved to Sydney. We moved to New South Wales. We moved around Australia.” 

Catriona started living on her own in Manila since she was 18. She bought her own plane ticket using the money she earned from modeling since she was 16 years old. “I don’t have the habit of asking money from my parents,” she said.

A nerd that does not play video games? Who ever heard of such a thing? This term nerd has been thrown around so much it's ridiculous. From her Wikipedia entry we read:

Furthermore, Gray was the lead singer of her school's jazz band, and she also starred in local productions of Miss Saigon. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catriona_Gray

Nerds are not the lead singer of their school's jazz band and do not land starring roles in musicals. They isolate themselves or congregate with like minded fellows and play video games, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, watch Star Trek, quote Monty Python, or any number of other things but definitely not the things she has done. She is not a dork, a dweeb, a geek, a square, and most certainly not a nerd. I bet she would not be able to tell me what the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is. Does she even know what a dilithum crystal is used for? Has she ever been to a Wizard People Party? Can she tell me how to get to Equestria? What is Blue Harvest? Doubtful she knows! If she was a true nerd she would have done a silly walk instead of a lava walk during the pageant.

Plenty of famous musicians have graduated from Berklee and they are hardly nerds. Catriona admits she does not even play an instrument! A proper music nerd would be obsessive over his instrument so no way this lady is even a music nerd. I am baffled as to how she was able to attend one the most prestigious music universities in the world and not play an instrument. How did she make it in? Is it because she sings jazz? If she can rearrange music in her head that would not make her a nerd. That would make her some kind of savant. Perhaps the idiot kind?

I really take except to Catriona calling herself a nerd. It takes a lot of vanity to enter a beauty contest. It's unavoidable. You have to worry about your body and your clothes and your make-up and you have to display yourself in front of millions of people. You cannot be shy. If she was a nerd she would be an introvert and not inclined to do any of the things it takes to be in a beauty pageant. Incidentally she has been involved in Philippines beauty pageants since at least 1999.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgpi2jOlt1c/

Nerd has a specific meaning and it is awful that women these days have taken to calling themselves nerds simply because they have invaded male spaces and now play video games and read comic books as if doing those activities automatically makes one a nerd.

Catriona is also not a Filipina. Sure she has a Filipina mother. But so what? She was born and raised in Australia and all her life looked up to who? To the white man who is her father. This lady does not have any Filipino consciousness. If her white father gave her all the answers to her questions then all the answers she has are not Filipino answers! 

I don't know how this Australian was able to sneak into the Miss Universe pageant as Miss Philippines (one-drop rule?) but she did and now the whole country is celebrating. In fact the town HER MOTHER IS FROM wants to build a life-size statue to Catriona.

https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/318040/albay-town-plans-to-erect-life-sized-statue-for-catriona-gray/

On Monday, Albay residents’ eyes were glued to their television sets in all-out support for Gray as she made her way through the catwalk with her iconic “lava walk” and slow-mo twirl. 

Local government units, particularly in Oas, has set up viewing centers with big screens in their respective multi-purpose halls and basketball covered courts to allow hundreds of residents to view the international beauty tilt. 

At around 11 a.m., when Miss Universe host Steve Harvey announced Miss Philippines as this year’s Miss Universe, shouts of joy and applause suddenly reverberated in every home, restaurant, school and public places in Albay. 

Mayor Domingo Escoto Jr. told Inquirer that they want the statue to let the future generations know that “here, we had a Miss Universe,” who represented Oas and the country. 

“Truly an Albayana, she was the most prepared candidate ever – if you prepare to fight calamities, the more you are prepared for victory,” Albay Representative Joey Salceda who hails from the neighboring town of Polangui, said in a statement after Gray was crowned. 

“I worked with Catriona in her previous quests and she was excited about her role as tourism champion for Albay,” he added.

How can Catriona be "truly an Albayana" if she is actually and in fact an Australian and not at all from Albaya? She is not and these people are deluded beyond belief to think she is from their town. Perhaps it all comes to the last sentence...Tourism.  This country will do anything to get people to visit this sad archipelago. It's disguising and a tad whorish. 

Interestingly the last Pinay to win Miss Universe is also a foreigner. Pia Wurtzbach was born in Germany to a German father and Filipina mother. However her family returned to the Philippines and she grew up here which makes her case totally different. She almost certainly has a Pinoy consciousness and not a German outlook on life especially since her father abandoned the family.

So, to recap: The Philippines is rejoicing at an early Christmas and it is all thanks to foreigners.

Now I really wanted to end with that last sentence but I came across this opinion column that I think is very important in shedding light on just what a Filipino is and who can be one.

https://www.manilatimes.net/is-miss-universe-catriona-gray-really-filipino/484402/

The question about Gray’s Filipino creds came up over her Western name, Caucasian looks, Scottish-Australian father, American accent, and birth and upbringing in Cairns, Queensland (she moved to Manila only at the age of 18). And she was educated entirely overseas, including certificate studies at Boston’s renowned Berklee School of Music. 

Doesn’t all that make the new Miss Universe more foreign than Pinoy?

If Gray were representing China or Japan, there may be reason for her hypothetical compatriots to question how Chinese or Japanese she is. 

The “Middle Kingdom” and the “Land of the Rising Sun” are racially homogenous nations, who see their national identities bound closely with race and culture. Hence, a heavy dose of foreign blood, upbringing and education could be seen as reducing a person’s Chineseness or Japaneseness. 

The more politically correct may see such a perspective as racist, but for a nation with millennia of single-race history and culture, one can understand why race cannot be so easily extricated from national identity. 

The Philippines, of course, is not a nation distinguished by a single race or religion maintained over centuries, if not millennia. 

In this ethnically charged repartee, it’s crucial for truth and unity to accept and indeed celebrate our nation’s rich amalgam of multiple ethnicities and influences accumulated and assimilated through the centuries. Even our name is not indigenous.

Let's stop right here. The first argument Mr. Saludo wants to examine is the ethnic argument. He writes that the Japanese and Chinese both have distinct homogenous cultures and races. Ergo foreigners can dilute the purity of the Japanese and Chinese races by mating with a member of those groups.

But the Philippines does not have a homogenous racial or ethnic culture. Ergo there is no such thing as a Filipino racially or culturally speaking. There is only a mishmash of many other races and cultures thrown together and banded under a name, the Philippines, that was forced upon them by foreigners and does not technically belong to this archipelago.

If not race and culture, what about location, location, location? 

Some nationalists may argue that being Filipino should be based on coming from our islands. This, despite the jus sanguinis basis of our citizenship, following parentage rather than birthplace, under the 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions. 

People were born and raised abroad, especially those with just one parent of Philippine nationality, may be seen as not Filipino enough. With that criterion, one would then have to exclude not just foreign-born beauty queens who brought international titles to the country, but also basketball, football, and other athletes who have made the nation globally competitive. 

Filipinos would also have to stop cheering such Filipino-American sports figures as Cleveland Cavaliers star Jordan Clarkson (who played for the Philippines this year), Miami Heat champion coach Erik Spoelstra, martial arts heavyweight champion Brandon Vera, six-time world champion wrestler David Bautista, one-time top-ranked golfer Jason Day, and four-time US national table tennis champ Angelita Rosal, among many other Fil-Am sporting greats. 

This phenomenon of foreign-fathered or — mothered, overseas-raised and instructed Filipinos excelling internationally cannot but explode with the 10-million-and-counting diaspora of Pinoys working and living abroad. 

And not a few expatriates, whether first or later generations, find cultural identity and pride in their Philippine roots. Some also see competing for the Philippines as their ticket to global renown. Especially if they face tougher competition in their home countries, due to far greater wealth, health, breeding and training there. 

Filipinos naturally cheer balikbayans who devote their talents, time, toil and treasure to win honor for our motherland, and to help the less fortunate among our people. Surely, such love and labor for the Philippines are as valid a criterion for Filipino nationality, if not much more so, than blood, birthplace, and upbringing. 

For Catriona Gray, who invested years not only to compete in Miss World in 2016 and Miss Universe this year, but also to use her renown, looks, dance and voice in promoting Philippine tourism and culture, plus bringing knowledge to street children, that criterion of service to the nation must be the ultimate mark of being Pinoy. May more of her kind bless our Mutyang Inang Bayan.

Here is the basis of citizenship as laid out in the 1987 Constitution as it pertains to this discussion.

SECTION 1. The following are citizens of the Philippines: 

(2) Those whose fathers or mothers are citizens of the Philippines;

https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/1987-constitution/

What are the implications of this provision? Let's take the case of famous American movie star Rob Schneider. His grandma was a Filipino citizen.  That means her child, Rob Schneider's mother, is a Filipino citizen. Because his mom is a Filipino citizen he too is a Filipino citizen. Any of Rob Schneider's children are therefore also Filipino citizens and so are their children and their children's children ad infinitum. There could potentially be a situation where someone down the line is, according to this provision, a Filipino citizen but have absolutely no real connection to the Philippines by not even having an "ethnic" Filipino father or mother! Saludo echoes this point when he writes:

And not a few expatriates, whether first or later generations, find cultural identity and pride in their Philippine roots.

You could potentially have generations of Filipino citizens who have never been to the Philippines! What good would it do to call yourself Filipino but have no connection to these islands? Well according to our writer here you could come back to the Philippines, even though you never left, and use your superior talents to play sports or participate in a beauty pageant. But you would only do this because:

they face tougher competition in their home countries, due to far greater wealth, health, breeding and training there.

Here he unintentionally denigrates the level of training and excellence in sport in the Philippines and he knocks down his own argument by mentioning their "home countries."  If you were born in another country than the Philippines and that country is your home then you are by no means a Filipino.

Saludo's argument in this section is off because he is using a few terms wrong. First "expatriates whether first, or later generations." This is wrong. If a person moves to another country he is an expatriate. Any children he has are not expatriates. They are natives to that soil on which they are born. He also brings up "balikbayans" but no foreign born "Filipino" is a balikbayan because they never left the Philippines. It is impossible for them to be a balikbayan.

In a nutshell Saludo's argument is Filipinos only exist as a political entity. Which is kind of weird to think about because that means Filipinos are a social construct based on a social contract, the Constitution.

This article has run on a bit so it's time to end it. Hopefully there is some meat for you to chew on and ruminate over. I thank Mr. Saludo for raising these issues and advancing our understanding of what makes one a Filipino.