You’ve heard of Jennifer Hawkins, Laura Dundovic and Jesinta Campbell, but the latest big Australian name to crack the international beauty pageant circuit is Olivia Wells, and this won’t be the last you’ll hear of her.
Training to become a paediatric surgeon, the 19-year-old medical student and committed charity worker may not seem like your typical beauty pageant contestant, but the newly crowned Miss Universe Australia is the face of a modern pageant queen.
The Melbourne teenager has postponed her studies to pursue the demands of the competitive beauty circuit, and she’s used to being asked why.
As Olivia acknowledges in an interview in the August issue of The Weekly, the only thing more constant than the Miss Universe contest is the criticism that surrounds it.
“People have this perception that all beauty queens are airheads and medical students are nerds who sit in their rooms and study all day. But the two are not mutually exclusive,” she says.
“I like to study, but I also like to dress up. I think, in life, rounding is the most important thing.”
Olivia has already forged a well-rounded career in her 19 years, having worked in Tongan hospitals and volunteering to tutor school-age refugees in suburban Melbourne.
And while it’s undeniable she also knows how to rock an evening gown, the newly crowned Miss Universe Australia convincingly dispels the notion that pageant are not the exclusive realm of the professionally vapid, and argues her commitment to charity work and her studies qualify her for the title of Miss Universe rather than separate her from her competitors.
In an interview with news editor Bryce Corbett, Olivia breaks down the modern beauty pageant and explains why she’s putting off her studies to compete.
She acknowledges she’s got big stilettos to fill, following predecessors Rachael Finch, Jesinta Campbell and Jennifer Hawkins, and reveals what she hopes to achieve in the competition she initially entered “for a bit of a laugh”.
“I want to do everyone proud,” she says.
“I want to do myself proud, I want to do Australia proud. I’m certainly not going into this competition without the idea of wanting to win it.”
Read more of this story in the August issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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