At 27 years old, Yoselyn Porras is the first married woman with children to participate as a candidate for Miss Costa Rica thanks to the recent change in criteria for beauty pageants. Her crowning in 2013 as Miss Teen World at just 17 years old now seems far away, she recalls in her house in Alajuela, a city neighboring San José, while preparing an artisanal bread with Sarah, her four-year-old daughter, before leaving for a photo shoot sponsored by the pageant, which will take place on August 16th.
Until this edition, candidates for national pageants or international ones like Miss Universe, which will take place in El Salvador on November 18th, had to be single and childless. Now they can be married, divorced, pregnant, have children, as well as legally recognized transgender women.
“It is very enriching to see how inclusion towards women and the different genders in our society has been growing,” said Porras.
“The mentality of people must change, it must evolve, it’s part of it. The world moves forward and you have to move forward with it, you can’t stay behind,” she adds.
Return to the runway
She had already closed the door on beauty pageants. Her youthful crown was far behind. Her career as an aesthetician, her gastronomy studies, and her family kept her busy and distant from the catwalks. But the change in criteria gave her a new opportunity. At the maximum age limit (28 years old), she has the chance this year to be crowned Miss Costa Rica and represent the country in Miss Universe.
She faces nine other candidates in Costa Rica, but for her, her participation shows that women can do “endless things.”
“Being a mom, being a wife, being a homemaker, having a career, being a student and still being in a beauty pageant. That makes everything complete,” she says.
Having a husband and children “should not hold you back, but rather propel you” to “participate or yearn to fulfill that dream I’ve always had (…) to represent my country in a pageant like Miss Universe.”
Inspiration for her daughter
She says her role as a mother led her to participate. Porras considers that a woman is “not only physical” but “integral, mature.”
“All women have our own beauty in different ways. Knowing how to demonstrate that beauty not only externally but also internally, having a positive message for the whole society,” she adds.
Principles that she aims to instill in her daughter Sarah, who helps her with the dough they are baking to have with coffee alongside her husband, Alex Moreira.
“In a few years when that little girl who is tiny at four years old grows up, at 15, she will be able to say ‘how proud of my mom, to see how she has triumphed, how hard she has worked, how she managed to fulfill a dream. I want to be like her’,” indicates Porras.
