When on earth the subject turns to women, bright thinkers become illogical; great philosophers, unempirical; and responsive poets, unfeeling. Indeed, hatred of or condescension toward women unite completely unrelated historical personalities or simple individuals. A woman is a czar, a monarch who has got to lead… a woman embodying beauty, brains and the heart.

 Jola Castor Lebrilla, 20, is a loving daughter, a respectful sister, an admiring friend, a real woman who believes in her ideologies. She was a student leader, a productive student, a teacher of love, and a loving teacher protégé. Having graduated from West Visayas State University, taking up Bachelor of Arts in English, Cum Laude, little did she realize, what lied after graduation aside from pure employment and the art of capitalism, that she could be hailed as the Miss Anihan Festival Queen 2011.

Indeed her beauty can’t be asked and so does her wits. Being crowned as the Miss Anihan Festival Queen 2011 was an approval of her long lost drive for high self-esteem, “people have always something to say, they always have their opinion and once, twice, thrice in my life, it brought out the timid in me”.

And winning the title didn’t just let her have the crown but it also made her earn self-pride.

From where she stands, a light reveals its rays. And by how the light sees its end, the end becomes a lighted trail. A trail towards another milepost. And a milepost that will soon be an immortalized hereafter.

That light represents her. The queen who proved mountains can move. The queen who said how important it is to be a career woman and a homemaker all at once. The queen  who believes, ‘women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life… if they are feminine, they are not ideal, and if ideal, not feminine’ is unequal.

A place is never legal without her people, according to her. What would history be like if a country only had plants? What is Romeo without Juliet? Hitler without Eva Braun, Pyramus without Thisbe? And Marcos without Imelda and her shoes? Duenas needs a person who embodies her ideals and advocacy. And she is Miss Jola Castor Lebrilla, the new festival queen.

Jola was born in 1990 in Iloilo City to her lovely parents. She is the youngest of three children, Shanny and Churchile…most of whom helped to send through her to college.

True, her beauty can launch a thousand ship and she can surely sink them all. Of what you are tells how you value your family. It is the hurungdun, the Kapitan Gimo, the karay-a nga garagumo, the chalit and the woman in you. It is who you are and it is that one part of yourself that remains to be uninhibited, unchangeable and unconquered.