VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 17:40:49 01/13/07 Sat
Author: << >>
Subject: CHILE'S HIL HERNÁNDEZ, MISS EARTH: “IT WASN’T EASY TO GET TO THIS POINT”


Interview with Hil Hernández, Miss Earth 2006
(January 13, 2007) (Ed. Note: Hil Hernández is the 23-year-old woman who, after Cecilia Bolloco, has been the only Chilean woman to obtain the first place in an international beauty pageant. Born in the city of Chiloé, she represents the classical Latin stereotype. In this interview with Ya magazine, Hernández talks about how she became a beauty queen.)

Hil Hernández was born in Castro, she is 1.81 meters tall and she is now enjoying her Miss Earth crown, the world’s third most important beauty pageant after Miss Universe and Miss World. Nonetheless, Hil says that getting there was something that didn’t happen out of the blue and that everything started after her father’s death. In these pages, she tells her story.
“When I was seven years old and my brothers were still teenagers, my father suffered a brain stroke.” From being a regular person, he was paralyzed from one day to another. He suffered from memory loss during the following two years and he could not recognize his own family. However, with an overwhelming tranquility, Hil says that this wasn’t a traumatic change in her life: “Children adapt easily to new circumstances, and I soon got used to the fact that my father could be okay one day, but we would have to take good care of him the next. My brothers suffered a bigger shock since they were teenagers when everything happened.”
In the following years her brothers got married and formed their own families while Hil remained at her father’s side until he died. She was then 15 years old and beginning her secondary education. “I took care of my father for eight years, but I felt like it was only one month. I could have done that forever. I never minded taking care of him; it was part of my life. I would go to school in the morning and in the afternoon I would give him tea and feed him while my mother worked. In the meantime I would go out and play.”
QUESTION: Did you ever feel your father’s condition was a burden?
HIL HERNANDEZ: No. It was a very normal stage of my life. I think that made me mature much faster. People would say about me: “She is such a mature girl! She can sit down with anyone and talk about any subject and she is only ten years old.” That happened because my parents never hid anything from me. I knew about my father’s strokes, I would go with him to the hospital, I would try to help. It was a very healthy situation and it never felt it like something traumatic, I never felt afraid. I would look at his green eyes, he would look back at me, he wouldn’t move, he wouldn’t talk, but I felt like we could communicate. I believe he was suffering much more than I was.
Her mother, Yorky Escobar, took charge of the family. “My mother immediately took charge. She said, ´He is my husband, the father of my children, this is complicated but we will get through this.´ We spent money that we didn’t have. We never took vacations because it was risky to take him out. Overall, I feel that what happened to us made us a very loving and close family. My mother is a great woman, she deserves my respect and I’m sure my brothers feel the same way.”
“When my father died,” Hernández says, “we felt a deep emptiness in our lives. After having a daily routine with him for eight years we went to having nothing and not knowing what to do. As months passed by we would look at each other’s faces at lunchtime and wonder ‘what do we do now?’ Everything changed one day when my mom saw an advertisement on television saying that models were needed. I didn’t realize what she was doing at the moment, but she was trying to make me change my attitude and go out into the world, as a way to get through everything that happened. And since I enjoy new experiences I said, “Okay, let’s see what happens.’”
She says it wasn’t simple. “There wasn’t such a thing as the exotic girl boom right at the moment, so things were complicated for me. I worked hard but it wasn’t easy; it wasn’t like I could walk into a room and immediately get the job. I wasn’t even thinking about becoming a top model, but I did want to make enough money so I could afford college. I didn’t want my mom to keep working so hard just for me. I had my own legs, my own arms, and I was smart, so why shouldn’t I get a job?”
At the age of 18, she started to participate in beauty pageants while still modeling. First, she entered the Miss World Chile contest and succeeded in becoming one of four finalists. “I liked that experience so much that I started to push my luck in international competitions. I traveled to China for the Miss Model of the World, and then I went to Bolivia and Costa Rica. Those were less important competitions but they helped me achieve this [Miss Earth] because you can’t be a beauty queen out of the blue. I never felt the pressure to win. To me, participating was a unique opportunity.”
Hil’s self-confidence is overwhelming and she says that was one of the keys to winning the 2006 Miss Earth competition in Manila, Philippines.
Proof of her self-confidence is the fact that she didn’t feel insecure when she was still at school, despite the fact that she never had dancing partners because no boys of her age were as tall as she was. “I was never a queen of my school dances because I never had a king as tall as me; it would have been a joke to participate in that kind of thing. So I tried other things like singing in festivals, dancing or acting in plays. There was a moment where I started to slouch, but my mom would tell me to straighten up because it wasn’t my fault if everyone else were short.”
Q: Do you think you won the competition because of you self-confidence?
HH: No one told me that, but I think that was the reason. I wasn’t nervous at all. In fact, people ask me: ‘What makes you jump and scream and be nervous,’ and I don’t even have a clue. I am very rational. When I want something I work for it and I get it, but right afterwards I think about my next goals. This triumph at the Miss Earth competition makes me feel really proud, but right now the crowning ceremony is nothing but a good memory. Now I’m concerned about the trips I will have to make, the meetings I will have to attend, and also about my work with the UN and UNICEF. My goal is to build something lasting.”
Q: You are not intimidated by anything.
HH: No, because I feel capable of standing in any stage and doing anything. Of course I will always feel a little anxious and the day I don’t feel that way and I don’t get the tickles in my stomach anymore is the day the whole thing will stop being fun. I’m not afraid of anything. How can I be afraid of something that I don’t know? But I am afraid of sickness because it’s something logical, because of my experience with me dad. My father’s illness is the most important thing that has ever happened in my life and I think my real life starts from that point. I had bad experiences after that but nothing compares with losing your own father. Those experiences shape your personality. You build yourself through your experiences with your own family and with the things that happen to you. Those are good or bad. Everything happens for a reason.
Q: What are your dreams?
HH: I have to hand my crown after one year but that doesn’t mean that I will be unable to live my own life. This is one year that I have to embrace and take advantage of it. I will no longer participate in any other beauty contests because I have already attained my goal. And I also interrupted my university studies. I would like to do something like acting or hosting a TV show. I have no idea, but I’m only 23 years old.

SOURCE: YA MAGAZINE

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.