Michelle Dee on joining beauty pageants: ‘I wanted to give myself, my advocacies justice’
If there's one thing that Michelle Dee wanted to do while she's joining pageants, it would be to prove to everyone that she can be a beauty queen, just like her mom and Miss International 1979 Melanie Marquez. This, in addition to finding a bigger platform for her advocacies.
The 28-year-old beauty queen shared this in Bea Alonzo's YouTube vlog uploaded on Saturday, Sept. 9, where the actress first asked if Michelle thinks she joined beauty pageants quite late.
To recall, the beauty queen participated in her first pageant, Miss World, in 2019 when she was 24 years old. In her interview with Bea, Michelle said that she doesn't think it was too late to do so, noting that she waited for herself to be fully ready.
"Years before I joined Miss World, years before I joined my first pageant, I already had that mindset that ‘Okay, I'm gonna join eventually,’ then I kept backing out year after year after year because I felt like I wasn't ready," she said.
She went on to share how she wanted to give herself “justice,” especially with the pressure of being the daughter of Marquez.
“I wanted to give myself, the family justice because of the pressure that was on my shoulders being the daughter of Melanie Marquez,” she said.
“So, I really had to take into account how prepared I felt, personally, in that phase of my life," she continued.
After clinching the Miss World Philippines 2019 crown and finishing as one of the top 12 candidates in the international competition, Michelle thought to herself that she will no longer return to pageantry—until the pandemic hit, which hindered her from spreading her advocacy further.
"I didn't get to maximize the things that I wanted to do, use the platform for all of the projects that I had planned. The whole opportunity just stopped," she recalled. “Imagine just waiting four years to be prepared mentally and physically and then coming back from London and then the world just stopped.”
“I really had to give myself justice, the platform justice, my advocacies justice, and try again," she continued.
Michelle joined the Miss Universe Philippines competition in 2022, where she was crowned as Miss Universe Philippines Tourism.
She tried again in May 2023 and was hailed as the winner of the Miss Universe Philippines 2023. She hopes to bring home the country’s fifth crown in the international competition in El Salvador on Nov. 18.