MISS Universe Catriona Gray is confident despite having stretch marks noting it makes her a natural woman.
She wants other girls to feel the same way about their body.
“(It) should be OK, shouldn’t it? I mean, every woman has flaws or they’re not really flaws, but they just make us natural, it’s what we have as woman,” she said in a recent interview on “Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho.”
“And I think it’s refreshing for people to see that, for young girls to look up and see, ‘Oh! She has tiger stripes too,’ you know. ‘Why should I feel like I need to hide them? Why do I not feel like I’m confident in them? I should be.’ And that’s the kind of dialogue I wanna start,” she added.
When award-winning broadcast journalist Jessica Soho, who conducted the interview, said she couldn’t believe Gray has flaws she retorted: “Who doesn’t, right? It’s a part of being a woman. I’m a regular person just like anyone else.”
The Filipino-Australian beauty queen also opened up about having scoliosis.
“I think that was drawn out of proportion. Yes, I have scoliosis, but it has never stopped me. I feel like it was blown out of proportion a little bit. Yes, I have scoliosis, yes it causes me discomfort, but that’s all,” she said.
Gray added: “It has never made me cry, it has never put me in excruciating pain and I’ve never seen it as a barrier to what I wanna pursue and what I want to do…. so it’s just a part that makes me unique. It’s something that I’ve had or diagnosed with at 12 years old and it only causes me mild discomfort, that’s all.”
Soho described Gray as sexy and nerdy which for her is a “deadly combination.”
Gray answered: “I think they call me nerdy because I do like all my presentations on Powerpoint, I like to write out my notes, I’m a note taker, that’s just because growing up I was very academic, I was very studious and I read a lot.”
The fourth Miss Universe from the Philippines also reveals that she is a certified foodie and blackbelter at the age of 12.
While she was never bullied as a kid, having a background in martial arts allowed her confidence, Gray said.
“I mean, that’s not the point of martial arts, it’s more about being able to defend yourself and having that confidence in your character that if the situation were to ever arise, that you could defend yourself, and that’s all I’ve seen, I’ve never seen it as a like ‘Don’t mess with me.’ But yeah, it’s just something that really build up my confidence as a kid. I never experienced bullying and I feel like that was the big part of that,” Gray explained. (ROBERT R. REQUINTINA)
