Since everyone is talking about whatever is going on inside BPCI, and I still cannot blog about that subject matter until everything is finally on the record, might as well make a post about Sirene Sutton who is getting all sorts of punches left and right for what happened during her Bb. Pilipinas 2017 Q&A.

You have to cut her some slack because the girl should not get all the pointing fingers at this point. It’s not easy answering a question when the horns and noisemakers of different pageant groups are simultaneously distracting whoever is answering onstage, let alone do it in front of a big audience. And I know for a fact that Sirene can easily answer about the responsibility of giving back to the parents for raising her up. After all, she is the family breadwinner and her life somehow parallels the situation.

Yes, nerves got into Sirene. No doubt about that. She had mental block. No excuses about that. She wasn’t sure if she heard the question properly because of the loud noise. Now she could have asked for the question a 3rd time but that would be pushing her luck too far and the clock is ticking. She ran out of time. End of story.

Who is to blame for the unfortunate turn of events on her part? Is she the only one deserving of the bashings because of being the focal point of the failed Q&A performance? Or could it also be a shortcoming of whoever trained her in this regard? IMO, there’s really no fool-proof way of escaping the claws and the flaws of publicly answering a question, unless she has been conditioned by trainers to go outside of memorizing answers and speaking from the heart instead. It’s not as easy as picking a question from the fish bowl and checking/correcting on what and how she would answer something. Rehearsed answers are not always the best option. And as I have told mentored pageant participants in the past, you do Q&A/interviews to express and not to impress. Expression is digging deep inside and saying something that is uniquely yours, not based on the experiences or thoughts of another individual.

So back to Sirene. Let us not push the girl too much because she has already cried over the lost opportunity. She is trying to pick up the pieces. And adding harsh words to an emotionally affected individual won’t help her get back into the groove and move on.