Watch this face
MANILA, Philippines - Pauline Prieto couldn’t breathe yesterday. It might have been the weight of an international modeling competition on her willowy frame, or fatigue from her rapid rise to the top. Whatever it is, it led the seemingly-invincible 17-year-old into thinking she was going to die. “I just couldn’t breathe,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh my God! Am I going to die?’”
That was Tuesday morning.
Wednesday night and Pauline Prieto, the modeling dynamo, is on all fours, under a bed and channeling the monsters of your childhood nightmares. The only hint of the previous day’s queasiness is a sigh or two between frames, and a penchant for resting on any surface that can support her.
“I know this is last mega minute but I think I’m coming down with something bad so I don’t know if I can deliver at the shoot tonight.”
When you receive a text like that from a top model, you’re half-sympathetic and half-dreading a potential transformation from down-to-earth model prodigy to model diva of Naomi proportions. Pulling out at the last minute and coming up with a questionable excuse — it reeked of the kind of bad model behavior you read about on Oh No They Didn’t. And so every labored breath came as an assurance, a comfort that Pauline has in fact, not let the deafening buzz get to her.
She was just tired, as she should have been. Since being picked as the country’s representative in next month’s Elite Model Look, a modeling competition that pits her against more than 80 models from 50 countries, she’s been training day in and day out, from ramp lessons to social graces.
Cutting Corners
Pauline Prieto’s rise to the top of the model heap has been a dizzyingly swift one. Early this year, model sister Patricia Prieto was doing ramp for Collezione. Rhett Eala, a family friend, saw Pauline and, with the encouragement of their mom Meca, put her in the show. “She was so awkward then,” says Meca, a Pitoy Moreno bridesmaid model in her younger days. “She was cutting corners while walking and just really, ‘Get me out of here.’”
But it seems the awkwardness made her stand out. In the audience was star stylist Liz Uy. Within weeks, Pauline would shoot her first magazine editorial, book more work, and meet photographer BJ Pascual, with whom she eventually forged a distinct artist-muse relationship. With him, Pauline would shoot some of her most inspired photos.
With her patented gap-tooth look and a willingness to chuck Filipino notions of glamour, Pauline challenges the contemporary definitions of beautiful and ugly. “I never thought of myself as pretty, but I always wanted to be the girl in the magazine that people look up to as a sort of ideal,” she says. “So when I started getting asked to model, I thought maybe I could be that person.”
Like most young achievers, Pauline didn’t have the easiest childhood. In between set-ups, Meca tells me about moving Pauline out of her grade school because of bullying. “Growing up, I always had insecurity problems,” Pauline admits. “I was always a bit off tune... But I mean, it’s also good to not be the best because you strive harder.”
And perhaps this is why Pauline has an understanding of the wheel — how you can be an outcast one day and prom princess the next, and vice-versa. You get the feeling that she has an awareness that belies her 17 years. “It happened really fast for me,” she says, “so it might end fast for me, too. I don’t want to be one of those older models who try to stay on top by stepping on the young models.”
“Because she’s so young, I still need to go with her,” Meca says, explaining her presence at the shoot. As we watch her teenage daughter nail another set-up, the poise, professionalism, and intelligence crammed in those 17 years comes to the fore.
“But she’s very deep,” she says with a hint of wistfulness. “She’s very mature for her age.”
