Olivia Medina in Rogue
Sometimes model is oiled, sometimes she is oiled too much. And sometimes it even looks really good. And case with Olivia Medina's performance for Rogue magazine, which is branded Philippines glamouruos originality, is exactly the case.
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The interesting thing about Olivia Medina might just be that she isn't interesting yet.
Olivia Medina, patiently sitting in a make-up chair at a shoot for a local teen magazine, is still in an apparent state of disbelief. She's been in the Philippines for only one year, and so many things have already happened. With a schedule that leaves her running from one shoot to another, and now with a possible lead role in an upcoming foreign film, it's understandable that the gangly nine year old inside her, with dreams of being a model in spite of scabby legs and eczema, might be extremely surprised.
Do we really want to know more about a model on a billboard? When a writer struggles to think of questions to throw at a face on a canvas sheet, what kind of story is she going to tell? This sort of problem is unfortunately fitting to a model's profession, as it complements exactly what a stereotype is: pure face value.
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Since we're talking about face value, I want you to see what I see.
You step out of your car and Typhoon Gener is looming above you. You're catch-ingaday in the lite of a still-unknown model, and you feel you can draw little from this. But five minutes after a handshake, it amuses you how much the discussion blooms with insight. You look at Olivia, and you find you are facing the quiet before a very different storm. You shift with anticipation at discovering what might be the next big talent on the cusp of breaking out. And as you sit inside a small Makati studio, chatting about the log cabins of faraway Saskatchewan, you feel you might never judge a prctty face again.
Olivia Medina grew up in a small town called Regina, Saskatchewan. Her younger days involved dug-up lakes making up for the lack of a beach, and fashion magazines making up for what would later on be a realizable dream. Eventually getting her self-taught walk and poses all polished and building her book up at the age of 16 weren't only for her mirror or for make-believe.
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"I would watch Fashion TV, I loved how the girls would look on the runway. I would pretend, and practice walking up and down the hallway in my house. Not because I wanted to be a model, but because I liked what I saw. It looked fascinatingto me."
At 18 she hugged her reluctant parents goodbye, and traveled alone for the first time. She landed in Tokyo, and for a young girl abroad on her own for the first time, it was like traveling to the moon. "From a small town girl to Asia," she jokes, now able to take a stab at one of her most daunting life experiences. Olivia's coming of age incubated within a city of a much larger and denser scale, leaving her holed up in a hotel apartment realizing that she had no conversational advantage and was verv much alone.
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"I basically cried every day talking to my mom on the phone. 'don't wanna do this, I want to come home' And my parents were like, 'Overcome this, you stay there, and you do it' I spent my first Christmas alone, my first Thanksgiving, New Year's, birthday." But being thrown into the deep end, Olivia emerged with a turnaround: "I became more independent."
Traveling back and forth between Shanghai and Tokyo for jobs presented a newkind of distance: nowit wasn't between there and home, it was between there and there. So when she eventually left Tokyo, she came back to Saskatchewan a different person—but a person who still had to deal with the surprise doors her parents were pushing her to select between: university or modeling.
She mulled over the decision for eight months, but the decision had been made long ago by the young child who bought magazines and wanted to be nowhere else but in the fashion industry.
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"It was hard; nobody likes to disappoint their parents. But I really loved modeling. If T wasn't doing it, I wanted to do it. When I was doing it, I wanted to do it, and never stop."
She soon found herself back at the airport, no longer scared, strengthened once more by there and there, strengthened by a determined singlc-mindcdncss, and strengthened by the promise of a new start in the Philippines, her father's home country.
"When you go to a new country, it's like gambling, you're taking a shot 50/50, you're either going to work or you're not going to work." Olivia means this in a more professional sense, not only in terms of landing jobs, but being suited to the market. Certain markets look for different kinds of models, she explains, thankful that her market was in the country in which she was always half-there.
"Actually, the first month I got here, I didn't work. After a month of not even having one job and you're going to castings every day, it's discouraging. You just want to go to a different market and hope that there'll be hope for work in another market for you. in another country."
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It was difficult in the beginning. She experienced castings at which clients would give herone look and slam her book, saying the clichéd word, "Next!" But there's the layer we forget models can have, and something Olivia had no trouble falling back on: genuineness and patience. "I don't know, I just stayed. I just did not want to leave.
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"When I first got here I would go to castings for TVCs, I was so nervous," she admits, constantly finding herself learning how to act and pose for different kinds of shoots. "But the more you do it. and the more you force yourself todo yourbest, the more you end up getting better at it. With modeling you need to be confident."
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The Philippine Fashion Week and other projects came in to lift up her spirits, and she found that her career was still taking off even during industry lulls. "In the new year, they said it was going to be slow—they would be working on their new campaigns, but I was working every day non-stop. I never worked so much in my life."
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From Korean plastic containers to men's deodorant, Olivia has been part of a range of different projects. With such a mixed bag, there will always be some projects that have no pity for aesthetic value. But Olivia persisted in spite of it, and found that humility was actually a clever career move.
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"I think what got me to overcome this shyness was just sucking it up and just doing it. No matter how stupid you feel, you sometimes just have to do it," she reflects. Being picky was only going to make for a short-lived career. "In my head, I would think, 'I don't want to wear this' or 'I don't want to wear this color of shocs'.but it's not about what you'd wear, it's about how you wear what you're given to wear. And that's what makes a good model."
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Now her parents understand, and have received their prodigal child with what was once reluctance now turning into support. She had proven that the catwalk wasn't an impassable tightrope. She attributes it all to "a good year," downplaying her success by saying she is no different from many other models. But I disagree. There's something about Olivia Medina, and who she'll be.
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"Try walking down the runway with six-inch heels and a gown you might trip over. People think modeling is easy. But it really isn't." She gives the example that models arc concerned about the angles of their faces not out of vanity, but out of professional survival. I was learning a different kind of face value. I don't know how far this emerging model will go, but with opportunity persistently knocking at her door, the most interesting part about Olivia Medina is that she's just started on her way.
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See Also: Isabelle Daza in Rougue
Tags: lingerie, Rogue
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