An 18-year-old Year 13 student of Xavier College in Ba, Gitali Ram, is making splashes and waves in the Philippines while being a contestant in the 2023 Face of Beauty International Pageant.
This is exciting news, given the fact that Gitali was first discovered when she entered a pageant in Suva last year. She was discovered by Mila Manuel, who was the Official National Director for Miss Supermodel Worldwide in New Zealand.
“After taking part in the pageant in Suva last year, I thought that that would be the end of my pageants but to my surprise, a very well-known person in international pageants, Mila Manuel, reached out to me to represent Fiji at an International pageant being the first ever teen contestant.”
Gitali is using this opportunity to put Fiji on the map as most people in the Philipines don’t even know where Fiji is.
“I became a youth delegate for international model at the UN just at 17. The pageants are not all about beauty, but they develop young female leaders and focus on charity which we have been doing for the past 8 days.”
The pageant started in 2012 and has been a beacon of hope for young ladies all over the world who are constantly intimidated by society’s standards of beauty.
According to Gitali, her advocacy message is that beauty is skin deep and that even though we’re all perfectly imperfect on the inside, what’s important is that we need to be kind to one another.
As far as pageants go, we can only imagine how challenging this could be for her, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that she’s doing very well and we’re so proud of what she’s doing to represent her home country on an international platform.
