How do you solve a problem like Maria – the very sexy teacher?
What an exquisite chattering class issue. Brilliant linguist joins top girls’ school and her pupils get A-grades. But, oh dear, she also has a fruity fashion blog — and is entering Miss Universe
Maria Wilkes is practising walking. she’s sashaying along, all swaying hips and exaggerated shoulder movements, on the six- inch stilettos she’ll wear when she competes for the chance to represent Britain in the Miss Universe contest next week. it’s quite a feat to stay upright.
‘One of my fears is that i’ll fall off these shoes,’ she laughs. ‘if i do i’ll just have to get up gracefully and keep smiling.’
Or maybe wear something more practical? That wouldn’t do, because Maria’s legs must be showcased in all their glory so they ‘look as if they go on for ever’, as she says in one of her fashion videos.
Maria, 26, wears a tiny skater dress (size 6). Her hair is long and swishy, her Bambi eyes fringed with false lashes; her pillowy lips composed into a winsome smile. she is a paradigm of physical perfection.
Her views are often platitudes. she is sweet, naïve and thanks you extravagantly for every compliment.
Maria, whose exotic beauty comes from a Venezuelan mum and an english dad, will compete against 38 other hopefuls in Cardiff, in a contest that sets high value not just on looks, she insists, but on confidence, eloquence, intelligence and fitness. she’ll parade in a swimsuit and perhaps ultimately wear the Miss Universe crown and traverse the globe.
None of this would be news, of course, were it not for one incongruity. Until this week, when she resigned to concentrate on her pageantry duties, Maria taught modern languages at a prestigious london independent girls’ school. Channing school, Highgate — its motto: ‘Girls enjoying success’ — is one of North london’s top schools for girls, celebrated for its holistic approach to teaching, as well as for its top grades.
Celebrities send their offspring to the school, which boasts that its ‘unique system of education ensures that each pupil will be understood, respected, supported and empowered’. it has been a centre of academic excellence for more than 130 years.
Maria, bilingual in spanish and english, is also fluent in French and German and is a graduate of royal Holloway, University of london. as a modern languages specialist at the £18,500-per-year school Maria was form tutor to a class of impressionable 11-yearold girls.
she also led last year’s GCSE group to a and a* grades in their spanish exams.
‘i was so proud of them!’ she says, with some justification.
simultaneously she found time to sustain a ubiquitous presence on social media. she has a YouTube channel, on which she rhapsodises over collections of make-up, shoes and clothes. ‘This is a very tight-fitting white ribbed dress. i really, really like this, yeah, i’m definitely going to keep this one!’ she gushes, parading one of that day’s purchases.
she regularly updates her instagram account with carefully curated photos of scanty sportswear, crop tops, bikinis and teeny dresses. she admits spending £ 400 a month on clothes, has five wardrobes full of them — ‘i’m a bit of an addict’ — and says she hasn’t even taken the tags off many of them.
Fashion labels send her garments and accessories in return for a plug. Who wouldn’t want lovely Maria endorsing their earrings/handbags/frocks? so followers see her sporting, for instance, a designer handbag or a pair of expensive wedges.
SETTING aside the question of whether encouraging such rampant consumerism in her pupils — many of whom idolise her — is appropriate, there is the more vexed issue of whether Maria has provided a good role model for the girls she teaches.
should they not be aspiring to become lawyers and astrophysicists rather than clothes horses? Opinion is deeply divided. ‘some girls will admire her, but they’re the sort for whom the summit of their ambition is to be a footballer’s wife,’ one Channing mum caustically observes.
‘ i’m very annoyed,’ says another, who wishes to remain anonymous. ‘Maria has said she wants to “inspire and empower” girls and then we see her packaging herself for the male gaze, parading her boobs and having a glamorous lifestyle as a result.
‘it’s fine if girls have firm values at home, but she is sending out a message that this is what you have to do to get ahead.
‘Girls are very vulnerable at 11, and forming their image of what being pretty is, and they’ll compare themselves with Maria and find themselves falling short. They’re besieged by images of physical perfection.
‘Then they see their teacher doing a blog with a titillating, sexy vibe . . . to say it’s empowering is disingenuous. it’s absolutely not. she’s a very sunny, enthusiastic
person and of course the dads queued up to see her at parents’ evening, but I wonder if she’s read a feminist book. If there are girls with eating disorders, it will add to their insecurities.’
Maria, conversely, views herself as a very positive role model to young women and is deeply distressed by any suggestion that she isn’t. She contends that her former pupils are canny enough to recognise that her social media sites are not a reflection of real life, but an idealised version of it.
‘Instagram isn’t reality and my pupils know that,’ she says. ‘They’d see me in my work clothes, sometimes without make-up; they know I don’t wake up looking like I do today.’
She says her social media profile is mostly to promote the brands she works with, but insists it’s ‘not immoral or illegal’ to post photos of her in bikinis: ‘Some parents might feel because I look a certain way their daughters will think they have to aspire to do so as well, but I’ve done work with them about body image and self-worth; about not being Little Miss Perfect.’
She says she didn’t send out a message that beauty is more important than brains either, and that she expected a lot from her pupils academically.
‘Channing promotes education over appearance. I reinforced the message that it doesn’t matter what you look like; what you contribute to the world is important.’
She adds that the school gave their permission for her to have a social media account.
‘But I was disappointed when certain parents thought I was leaving teaching for ever — I’m not — and prioritising a pageant which judges you only on beauty — it doesn’t. There are interviews, a round of tough questions, public speaking. The idea that I’m encouraging vulnerable girls to develop eating disorders upsets me most of all. It’s just not true. I’m promoting a healthy lifestyle.
‘I exercise regularly, I don’t diet; I drink very little. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself physically and intellectually.
‘I believe I’m a great example to girls who want to become independent young women who use their intellect to decide what they want to do with their lives.
‘We should encourage them to explore every opportunity that comes their way. Many parents have recognised this. ‘Some have said: “She has it all — brains and beauty. She’s educated and she’ll look great in the swimwear round.” ’
Maria’s year seven pupils have rallied to support her. ‘A very kind form tutor,’ says one. ‘I love Miss Wilkes! Her lessons are such fun. She even talks about Riverdale (a U.S. teen drama) with us, too.’
Maria’s passion for fashion and appearance comes from her glamorous mum Argelia, 50, a one-time beauty therapist, who has been mistaken for her sister. The South American branch of the family are devotees of beauty pageants: an aunt and cousin have taken part.
Maria was born in Venezuela, where her father John, 68, who worked in the oil industry, met Argelia. When Maria was eight, the family moved to Havant, Hampshire, where she went to the independent, single- sex Portsmouth High School.
In her early teens, she recalls feeling isolated by her beauty; she was a shy girl, often taken to be aloof.
‘I didn’t fit into any group,’ she says. ‘For about a term, when I was 14, I ate on my own in a toilet. I didn’t want to look too needy.’
When she was 18 she toyed with beauty pageantry. ‘But Dad pushed the academic side,’ she says. ‘He wanted me to go to university and develop a career first.’ Which of course, she did. She insists that competition for the UK title will be tough. ‘There’s a Harvard-educated lawyer, a girl who’s half Brazilian and speaks Portuguese and another who’s fluent in Arabic.’ Contestants’ intellectual assets will be valued as highly as the physical, she says.
WeCHAT in the grounds of the luxury apartment block in Canary Wharf, London, where her parents own a flat with views of the Thames. It’s easy to dismiss her as banal and acquisitive: an indulged only child of affluent parents.
Then she says something that confounds this assumption. She mentions she’s had two serious relationships. For two years she went out with a City trader who ‘splashed the cash’.
‘It was like he owned me,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have his respect. He just wanted to take me to expensive dinners and flaunt me like a possession. It took me a little while to realise it wasn’t healthy.’
Then, 18 months ago, she revived a friendship with Jack Hughes, 26, whom she’d first met at university, and they fell in love. They’ve bought a home together in Truro, Cornwall, a stone’s throw from the coast, where they plan to settle.
Jack bobs in and out of her videos, dumping groceries on the kitchen counter, blundering into shot then disappearing to rustle up beef burgers. He seems cheery, grounded, decent.
‘Jack is the most thoughtful and caring person,’ says Maria. ‘ He puts other people before himself; his mum, his sister, me. We want to have a quiet life in Cornwall, get a dog. He’s definitely “the one”.
‘Once the pageant is over I’ll take up teaching again. I’ve been a primary and secondary school teacher so I’d love to teach adults.’
Meanwhile, there’s work to do if she’s to take the stage as the UK’s representative of Miss Universe.
She is raising money for the Strongbones Children’s Charitable Trust helping those with bone diseases. She’ll be raising awareness, too, of women who’ve been victims of acid attacks.
And of course she’ll be showing her army of fans what she’s wearing, and what she certainly isn’t.
‘Flip-flops are a “no” in Paris,’ she warns in one video. ‘They mark you out as a tourist. Team your outfit with comfortable shoes,’ she offers, ‘and crop your feet out of photos.’
You may feel the lovely Maria, whose talent as a linguist is manifest, could be more usefully employed teaching children how to conjugate irregular verbs. But for the time being, at least, the classroom will have to wait while she prepares to prink, pout, swish her hair and sashay in those heels.
On a recent visit with her mum to family in Venezuela she went to see her godmother, an orthodontist, who rendered her teeth dazzling white. Then, dressed in a tiny playsuit, she took lessons from a ‘pageant trainer’ who ‘ talked her through’ the challenge of walking on the catwalk.
Let’s hope she acquits herself gracefully and manages not to fall.