Binibining Pilipinas reigns supreme among all national pageants in the Philippines as it mounted the grandest pageant event of the year! The Smart Araneta Coliseum was witness to the largest gathering of beauty queens all over the world with over 100 beauty queens gracing the event last July 7, 2024.

This is part 2 of our ultimate pageant review of the 60th Anniversary Edition of the Binibining Pilipinas pageant.

BINIBINI BATCH 60

After not being able to predict last year’s winner Angelica Lopez (a happy surprise win for us), we started to have some doubts if our ability to predict winners has eroded. We’re just thankful that we haven’t lost that gift apparently with this year’s batch as all 4 winners were in our radar of possibilities. At one point Pasarela trainor Ian Mendajar reminded us that we have apparently predicted a month ago that Myrna and Jasmin would be the last two winners.

Unlike in previous years, we usually made public who are our personal favorites aside from our more cerebral picks to win the titles. But someone last year told us that they took to heart that they weren’t on our personal list despite being in our more “professional list” of possible winners. We never thought that our list matter so much to the candidates and we’re trying our best that our list wouldn’t be something that could cause the Binibinis to be discouraged. So this year we never revealed our personal faves, a list we can now reveal that included eventual winners Myrna Esguerra, Jasmin Bungay, Tala dela Cruz, Trisha Martinez, as well as Samantha Acosta, Vera Dickinson, Liezle Jones and Vienne Feucht.

In all honesty, it is difficult to gauge who will be winning this year because the Binibini Batch 60 is filled with the most underrated candidates that we can probably still select the 2025 reps from this year’s batch! We cannot state this enough, this batch is severely underrated and if we are to compare it with other recent batches, they are comparable to Batch 2022.

Like Batch 2022, this year’s batch is arguably competitive in terms of facial beauty. The only difference here is that Batch 2022 have already popular ladies who have already amassed following on social media. So we are hoping that in the future we would be able to request permission in advance to interview the girls one-on-one to give the Binibinis be “discovered” by fans. Or perhaps allow the Binibinis to mount their respective meet-and-greet with pageant media. The more public they are, the better it is for the pageant with more popular candidates. This is why the candidates in Miss Universe Philippines are more popular, it is because they are always present on the feeds of pageant pages with so much content from their meet & greets with the press.

THE ONES WE WISHED MADE SEMIS

Major heartbreak for us that two in our list of crown contenders didn’t make top 15 – Vera Dickinson and Liezle Jones. Perhaps the differences in scores between the two and those that made top 15 were in just the decimals, that a quarter of a point could have probably spelled a semifinalist finish. That is how I believe the competition is fierce this year.

Liezle was one of the more quiet Binibinis we encountered in this batch, which we also seen reflected in her socials. She barely made a mark in her social media which could have been a way to push for more visibility for her campaign. As for Vera, perhaps she played it safe comparative to other Binibinis. She has great potential and we still believe that she can be a possible Filipina rep in the future.

THE TOP 15 SEMIFINALISTS

The top 15 was a collective of morenas, mestizas and chinita beauties. And we’re living for it! The diversity is very much welcome in our books. It is our hope that in the future we would see Binibinis that are more on the darker morena side.

10 Binibinis from our 12 crown contenders made top 15 this year. And were very happy with that as some of the ladies that were largely ignored by fans were on our list. The likes of Kara Daniela Villarosa and Jasmin Bungay weren’t in the radar of pageant pages yet once we saw potential, we would make it known that they’re in our radar. This was the reason they’ve been very visible in our discussions on YouTube, posted on our socials…

We believe that the semifinalists this year were deserving of their titles because they’ve really worked hard for it. I only wish that during the Q&A portion, they relax and sound more conversational and unrehearsed in delivering their answers. One of the ladies we were impressed was Vienne Sirin Feucht although we hope she’d had given more context to her answer. We were glad to see Carmela Cuaresma make it into the semis because she is absolutely gorgeous. We also hope that Kara Daniela Villarosa would return to Binibining Pilipinas in the future as we see great potential. Her question was a bit shallow to our liking but Kara could have given a more impactful answer on the perks of growing up as an introvert. Roella Frias Solis is one of the ladies with the most arresting faces and we hope that she polish her Q&A more.

THE BINIBINI RUNNERS-UP

Rumor has it that the Binibining Pilipinas runners up are asked to be on guard as they may be given opportunities to compete internationally. While this may be a great incentive for the ladies, we feel that they should be focused first on carrying out their duties as co-queens.

We say they are co-queens as we have observed that in Binibini the runners up are treated equally as the titled queens. Safe to say that all four winners are queens in treatment.

When Trisha Martinez was announced as 2nd Runner-up, we felt vindication for her. Her journey to the crown was not an easy one, being a victim of body shaming as a candidate. We felt that created a desire and fire in her to prove her detractors wrong. Our Doktora Trisha is now a Binibini winner, not an easy feat considering that she came to Bb. Pilipinas 2024 as an independent candidate, who is still a practicing dentist and balancing the demands of the competition. We hope that she’ll be given an opportunity to compete internationally, that is how big is our belief in her.

As for Christal Jean dela Cruz, whom we’ve become more comfortable calling by her nickname Tala, we hope that she serve her year as Binibining Pilipinas 1st Runner-up and learn the ropes so to speak and then return to Binibini a year after, or two. At age 19, she has to much potential and growth to experience and we hope that she takes this year to mature into the role of a Binibini winner. We believe that we might be seeing a Miss International in her. Tala has a very commercially beautiful face and it was not surprising that she got the lion’s share of the sponsor awards.

THE CROWNED QUEENS

We couldn’t be any happier with the two titled queens in Binibini this year. These two we felt that we were part of their journey from the very beginning as we saw their maturity and growth throughout the entire competition.

At first we didn’t recognize Jasmin Bungay and we only saw her as a potential winner during the Dia Ali Swimwear fashion show at The Lagoon of the Gateway Mall 2 last May 27th. Since then we’ve kept our eyes on her and even making sure that she has visibility on our page and socials so that fans and other pageant pages would see her potential as well. Jasmin was both in our list of Best Faces and Best Bodies in the competition, so we were not surprised she won Binibining Pilipinas Globe. What cemented her in our list was her final night answer on the SOGIE Bill which garnered her cheers from the audience. From that moment in the finals, we know for sure that a top 4 placement was inevitable. Jasmin has the backing of our Middle-East based designers for her international competition and we hope that come her competition, we would see her soar and earn us once again that Miss Globe crown.

We won’t tire to rehashing this story of running back at the New Frontier Theater to catch Myrna Esguerra after the Binibining Pilipinas final callbacks in April 5, 2024. We weren’t able to get good footage inside as our position wasn’t the best angle to get videos or photos of her. So we had to chase her at the back gate. And glad we did that as we were right that she’ll gonna win. Since then, we’ve always chased her for photos and videos because we know that once she wins, access to her would be a challenge. Myrna became a favorite to win by the rest of the media corps after the Press Presentation last June 7th. By the coronation night, we knew that after winning Best in Gown and Best in Swimsuit, all she needed was to have a safe pass at the Q&A and a crown was hers. And she didn’t disappoint.

BINIBINING PILIPINAS 60 AT A GLANCE

Some of our followers on our social media platforms have asked us the day of the coronation night if should they just watch on TV or go to Araneta Coliseum to watch it live. We encouraged them to watch in person because it is an altogether experience to behold. Those that went to watch the Coronation Night did not regret the experience.

The 60th Anniversary of the Binibining Pilipinas pageant was a showcase of nostalgia and a flex of the bright future ahead for BBP and BPCI. That spectacular night in July 7, 2024 was a show of supremacy from the pageant institution that nobody can now question its relevance and its standing as the biggest, most prestigious and longest running national pageant in the Philippines. No pageant fan or connoisseur can question if the BBP is a dying brand because the Coronation Night just silenced doubters and critics alike.

Cheers to 60 more beautiful years of the Binibining Pilipinas pageant!