Miss Mexico believes in togetherness, equality
By Mehru Jaffer
JAKARTA (JP): During her week-long visit to Jakarta, Mariana Rios Franco discovered that women here are very sweet and friendly. And at the end of her short trip, the first one to Asia, the 22-year-old Miss Mexico expressed hope that they would stay as gentle and warm as she finds them today.
For Mariana feels that people around the world are becoming too cold and calculating. They are too aggressive and losing their warmth. And in their desperate pursuit of things material they have little time to be loving and giving.
The youngest of seven children, Mariana is a great champion of family values, of bringing people together and working toward greater community closeness. She may be clad in a brief, body- hugging black dress, but it is amazing how old-fashioned Mariana really is at heart. She believes in the equality of men and women, of course, but also feels that it is more natural for a mother to stay at home and be with the children when they are very young.
She is pained at the way people meet, marry and then separate, leaving millions of children with so much sorrow. What hurts her most is to see so much intolerance, cruelty and fighting among people in the world.
Although studying tourism, Mariana would like to work in the performing arts, especially singing. "If I make it in show biz as a pop singer I will sing about love, peace and togetherness, all commodities that are becoming so rare in today's world," she told The Jakarta Post last week.
Mariana is also a natural. She does not believe in beautifying one's self with plastic surgery or with pumping synthetic substances into the body. She does not bother to remove hair from her body and rarely visits beauty parlors even for a facial. She prefers to do her own makeup, adding some color to her lips and cheeks herself.
On occasion she does enjoy an oil massage at home and wonders if she will find the time in Jakarta to try out the traditional massage this country is so famous for. For Mariana prefers beauty to radiate from the inside. In order to look forever fresh and happy, she is very particular about what she eats and works out to keep trim. She also likes to think kind thoughts whenever she can.
"I hope I never poison my body with alcohol and drugs or my mind with negative thoughts," she says. The correct attitude is the secret to being a beautiful person. Just being physically attractive is not enough, says Mariana, who dreamed of becoming a beauty queen since she was six years old. As she sat before the television one day, she saw how radiant and happy the girl who had been crowned the most beautiful woman in the world looked and that is when she decided she wanted to look and feel the same way.
Ever since she was crowned Miss Mexico, almost a year ago, she has been extremely busy acting as cultural ambassador for her country and supporting various charities along with making hectic preparations to contest the Miss World title to be held at an international pageant next month. Apart from making sure she stays healthy and attractive, Mariana is struggling hard to express herself better in the English language.
"To be able to speak English fluently is important if I am going to represent the global woman after the contest," says a confident Mariana, who visited with a cultural group that participated in the International Festival 2000 at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (Jakarta Playhouse) and celebrated Mexico's independence day with dance performances here in early September.
Mariana feels the world is faced with a host of problems, but the gravest one is not just material poverty and deprivation but how empty the heart of the human being is becoming. She is flattered, but does not take too seriously, all the attention showered upon her, especially by members of the opposite sex after she became Miss Mexico. Mariana wants in the end to be liked and wanted for herself and not because she is a beauty queen.
She does not have a special man in her life yet but is on the look out for someone who will be extremely attentive and devoted to the little needs in life, and not just to her material wants. And one who will always remember to bring her roses.
In the absence at the moment of a beaux idial, the greatest love of her life remain flowers and she is sorry not to have made it to Bali on this trip, an island which she has heard is one big garden. But she is extremely happy to get this rare opportunity to travel all the way from her country to Indonesia, which is so far and so costly to visit at one's own expense.
"I was able to make it to Indonesia only because I am Miss Mexico," Mariana points out, adding that she has no idea why people, including some feminists, are so against beauty pageants.