I think the Miss Universe title not only gives me the opportunity to become a role model for Latina girls around the world, but to show that beauty isn't just about the outside.
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.
The reason Jennifer Lawrence is allowed to be a body-positive role model to young girls and 'chubby' women is because she is representative of conventional beauty.
I learned the truth at seventeen, That love was meant for beauty queens, And high school girls with clear skinned smiles, Who married young and then retired.
I was never an ambitious girl, or even a self-confident one. I never went in for beauty pageants or wore a stitch of make-up until I went to Los Angeles.
I'm a 'never say never' girl. Frank Sinatra retired four times. He kept coming back. But there are people in our business who want to die on stage. Literally. I don't want to do that.
Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that's going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it's serious. It's serious business.
When you look at movies, the lead girl is always gorgeous and thin. There is a stereotype that you need to look a certain way and when you get in the business you really feel the pressure.
Female rappers get it the hardest. You have to be a girl, yet you have to be just as hard as the guys. I think some female rappers get scared out of the business before they can make it.
By 2003, every fool was getting into real estate. The checkout girl at my local supermarket handed me her newly printed real estate agent business card.
Because my business life is so busy, my home is really my sanctuary. That is where I reflect and spend quality time with my girls.
If I wasn't performing, I wasn't alive. That's the truth. My parents had absolutely no interest in the business, but they knew it made me happy, so they said 'Go for it, girl!'
I could never muster the courage to speak to girls in my college in Pune. Most of them were Parsis and spoke English. I came from a village and could barely converse in English.
That's the awesome part. Little girls now have a chance to look up and see women playing soccer, basketball, softball and now hockey - and know they can win a gold medal, too.
I don't think people were betting on me, but they were giving me a chance. I think I rode a wave there, by being different in appearance than the girls who preceded me.
It was always my dream, to do a leading role on Broadway. It's what I went to college to do, in hopes of one day someone taking a chance on me and saying, 'You know what? You're going to be our girl.'
It's not like I'm looking for a blonde or a brunette, light-skinned or dark-skinned. I feel like I give any girl a fighting chance.
Of course, I loved the Spice Girls. I loved Geri and Baby, but who liked Posh Spice? They said I looked like her, and I said: 'That's not cool, that's really mean.'
But it's cool working with female directors because I'm a girl, so you do relate to them more. You can talk to them about other stuff like clothes and all that.
See, at a certain point it becomes cool to be boy crazy. That happens in sixth grade, and it gives you so much social status, particularly in an all-girls school, if you can go up and talk to boys.
I remember girls watching it in high school, and I thought the basketball part of the show was cool. And lo and behold, a few years later, I found myself in 'Tree Hill' land.
