Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

The Filipina is a beautiful person, inside and out. She stands out from the crowd with her morena skin, disarming smile, deep dark brown eyes and long, silky hair. But colonial mentality has progressed in such a way that some of us see a different kind of Filipina – mestiza or fair-skinned, a lighter shade of hair and a number may have opted for physical enhancements.

But then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say. And in a country where beauty pageants abound, when someone is crowned the winner, we better believe it that she’s the fairest of them all. Yet when a Filipina gets a title outside her own country, you would know that there is more to her than her winning smile or beautiful gowns.

Enter Filipino-American Aileen Jan Vadehuesa Yap of Houston, Texas, who was crowned as Miss USA2009 last July 10. The daughter of Cagayanons Dr. Romeo Sy Yap and Virgincita Bautista Valdehueza Yap, AJ, as her friends and family call her, is a junior student at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, majoring in Biology. She intends to pursue medicine and be a pediatrician someday. Both Miss Yap’s parents are in the healthcare profession, as her father is a psychiatrist while her mother is a nurse and the director/owner of Virginia’s Lakeview Personal Care Home in Texas. Abeauty with brains, Miss Yap also graduated as the Most Outstanding Student at the Sacred Heart School in Conroe, Texas and summa cum laude at Willis High School.

In an interview with Mindanao News, Miss Yap was quoted, "I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, seeing how my parents can help someone else’s life and also seeing how rewarding it is to be able to help someone in need."

Barely out of her teens, the 20-year-old Miss Yap won over 15 semi-finalists, also taking home special awards as Best in Swimsuit and Best in Evening Gown. She will represent the United States in the 49th Miss pageant which will be held at the Venetian Macao Resort in Macau, China in November. This is the same pageant that has crowned four other Filipinas in the past – Gemma Cruz (1964), Aurora Pijuan (1970), Melanie Marquez (1979), and Precious Lara Quigaman (2005).

Incidentally, Miss Yap will face another Filipina in the Miss International pageant – the Philippines’ representative Melody Gersbach, a Filipino-German from Daraga, Albay.

Whoever takes the crown – Miss Yap or Miss Gersbach – it is no doubt that Filipinos all over the world will be equally proud.