HER NEW PURPOSE
A woman striking on her own well beyond her storied reign, Megan Young continues to live out her truth one new day and one thrilling adventure at a time
Four women in mountains of gloss and fabric hold hands; drum rolls while hearts beat as the camera dollies across the stage. “Philippines!” shouts the chairwoman of the Miss World Organization. A tightly held top bun, a swinging pair of chandelier earrings and tears pricking the corner of her eyes, our very own Megan Young was crowned. It has been four years since the longlashed, olive-skinned actress wowed the world with her grace. Nations have endured political, economic and cultural upheavals. Leaders have changed. Rockstars have died. Apps have come and gone. Megan, all glammed up in yellow pantsuit, sits posed on a high metal chair—ostensibly, the same.
“In terms of my personal life, I would say not much has changed—just the fact that my circle is even tighter now and I’m closer to a lot of people around me. But me? I’m still goofy and I’m still a little bit wacko from time to time. So I don’t think much has changed within me, it’s more of the surrounding factors that have changed,” she says.
The inexplicable sincerity that radiates from her eyes, the extra curve that appear on her upper lip when she’s about to smile, and the voice that seems to crack when she talks about a topic she holds dear—all still coming from the same woman who took center stage and sat on the white, cushioned throne.
Her walls are down; a very rare feat for a beauty queen and an actress. There is no air of pretense. There is an ease that can only be displayed by one who is at peace with the self; a kind of peace in the knowledge that we are human— vulnerable and imperfect.
“Behind me sitting prim and proper in front of you, I really am not perfect. And I think I don’t know if you saw that during the shoot where I’m really not a beauty queen when I’m around people I’m comfortable with. I’m very kalog and I’m very makulit. I’m like a kid,” Megan explains as her deep-set eyes light up.
BACK TO THE CORE
On one hand, there is this frivolous side of Megan whose childlike wonder emanates to the fore; and on the other, there is a sagacious train of thinking that the young woman naturally possess.
It may well be attributed to her already working as an actress even as a teen. A time that would have meant throwing a pile of angst to the world was a time Megan was building professional skills she practices up to this day.
“I’m very OC when it comes to my time,” she says just right after recollecting the hectic schedule she’s been having. “For me time—it’s been always an important factor about me especially when I started younger in the industry and my superiors were always telling me to be on time; to respect other people’s time because you wouldn’t want other people to do this to you. And up to this day, I keep that in mind.”
This mindfulness of other people’s time is just one of the myriads of things Megan has now carefully considered.
With the Miss World Organization having a strong focus on what their representatives can bring to improve the state of the world, Megan has found a greater sense of consciousness towards the various challenges that plague society; how we, as citizens of the world, affect these concerns.
“I did my first project with Miss World in Haiti and we had just had the accident where we fell down, and a week after I was already in London, and that’s when typhoon Haiyan happened. It was terrifying because can you imagine being far away and not being able to do anything?” she recalls.
BEAUTY WITH A HEART
Megan grew increasingly frustrated, as she wasn’t allowed to go home right away when Haiyan struck. Her mentors told her to first raise awareness about the help that they would need to get from stakeholders. At first, she didn’t understand it because like everybody else, she wanted to give immediate help. But strategic thinking trumps short-term needs.
“I think the approach that we took was the right one because we were able to raise awareness, raise funds, and bring that to the relief centers. We helped out with Red Cross a lot during our time,” she says.
“I think what was important about our project during that time was when we visited the sites itself because one lady came up to me and she said, ‘You know you don’t even have to do anything. You just have to be here and we’re so happy.’ And things like that make you really want to push harder for raising awareness and raising money to help these people out. It’s the simple things like that that make you really want to push yourself because they appreciate the work that you do.”
The authenticity of Megan’s heart is palpable. The way she speaks as she remembers these trying times quickly bring you to that visual memory of bodies stacked one after the other, mothers looking for their children, and families clamoring for desperate help.
Actually being there magnified Megan’s desire to help. She reached out to the owner of Miss World, Julia Morley, telling her that she is getting frustrated because she wanted to do so much but she was not able to. “She [Julia] sat me down and she said, ‘You know what, Megan, one thing that I want to tell you is that you’re not superman; you can’t help everybody out, that’s just the reality of it. You can’t swoop down to save every single person but what you can do is to focus on one thing and help them out.’”
“One thing that she didn’t want for me to do was to do little bit here and there. She wanted me to focus on one thing and give all my energy to that so I can help these people out tenfold. And the efforts would give you better results.”
THE PURPOSEFUL FUTURE
Not visible to the public eye is Megan’s many other projects with Miss World. One of which is the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) wing that they put up for kids with cancer. In PGH, the children’s ward is replete with all the kids with
“I REALIZED HOW MUCH OF AN IMPACT THAT SOMETHING LIKE THIS CAN GIVE SOMEONE
all the kinds of illnesses imaginable. Hence, these children are just getting sicker and sicker because one may have TB and the other may have an entirely different sickness, and they’re in one place, so it is highly likely that they could be contagious to each other, making their conditions worse.
“I even met a dad whose kid was a recipient; he was able to stay in that ward because of the money that we raised and because of the ward that we built and he was so thankful because his son survived cancer and he was showing me the pictures. I was thankful for that because up until that point, which was last month, I realized how much of an impact that something like this can give someone.”
Another advocacy that Megan is slowly trying to mobilize is a literacy program by way of encouraging people to read more books. The way she speaks about books display the two sides that co-exist within her—the kid and the woman.
“I was able to think more; be more creative, think of stories, and it’s because of these books that I was exposed to when I was younger. I was in 2nd grade and I was reading full, thick books already but because I was exposed to it, and that’s something that I want to be able to bring in the future to communities that don’t have access to that,” she says as her voice seemingly cracks, her eyes radiate, and the curve on her upper lip appears.