IT’S pen and paper over crown and catwalk for this Thomasian—at least for the mean time.
The Thomasian community has again a reason to celebrate as a Journalism junior, Kristel Marisse Tingzon, outshined 44 delegates from all over the world to bag 2nd runner up honors in this year’s Miss Global Queen International last Sept. 24 in XiangShan City, China. For years, the university has been has been producing many respected and revered names in the entertainment and media industry.
But despite her new crown, the model-beauty queen said her academics is still her top priority.
“Hindi na nga sana ako tutuloy (in China) kasi mawawala ako for three weeks (in school),” she says. “But it was my responsibility as the country’s delegate so I went ahead with it.”
Although she will still do pictorials, she will decline major projects until she graduates. She said, “Nag-stop na kasi ako for two years back in high school to give way to modeling.”
First catwalk steps
When she was just 12 years old, Tingzon first appeared in a television commercial with Phoemela Barranda for the product Extraderm Lite.
“That commercial earned me my first ever paycheck,” Tingzon recalls. “The money was set aside in a bank for my future use.
“I never dreamed of becoming a model,” she says. “I so hated it at first that I turned down a lot of offers. But I thought, ‘it doesn’t take a lot of your time and you get a good pay for it’, so I gave it a shot.”
With her simple beauty and slender figure, Tingzon was so in demand that she had to stop high school for two years due to projects and beauty contests.
Tingzon did print advertisements for a few years and ramp modeling under top modeling agencies in the Philippines, like Saga Events. She even got a chance to work with renowned fashion director Robby Carmona during last year’s MTV Fashionista Best Model of the World Search.
Although she had no food restrictions whatsoever, she admits she went through vigorous workouts in the gym and a strict diet so she could maintain her figure.
“Mataba kasi ako dati, so I would sweat out 11 kms on the treadmill everyday. Then, I would only have a piece of skinless chicken and a cup of rice,” she recalls. “It was really hard, but it paid off in the end because I won the title of Top Model of the World.”
With her tall frame and fair complexion, it’s not hard to spot Kristel in the crowd. But what sets her apart from other Filipina models is her simplicity offstage.
Although Tingzon aspires to be a pilot someday, she took up Journalism because she loves to write.
“I write more on the literary genre. Back in high school, I used to join poetry contests,” she said.
The 174cm beauty also won the Most Photogenic award in the MTV Fashionista Best Model of the World Search last year.
Her complex schedules made Kristel opt to freelance in her modeling for now so that she could have a hold on her studies. Before agreeing to a project, she first makes sure that it will not consume much of her time. For the meantime, only pictorials or ramp modeling will be the only thing that she will be doing.
