Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray quote-tweeted a meme inspired by her accidental blunder when she announced the Top 12 finalists of the Binibining Pilipinas 2021 in response to Boy Abunda‘s much-talked-about question in the Q&A segment.
The beauty queen, who served as one of the hosts in the pageant’s 57th edition, trended on local Twitter on Sunday night when she mispronounced Valenzuela, the city that Meiji Cruz represented, to Venezuela.
Venezuela, a country in South America, is famous in the international pageant scene for securing major wins in beauty pageants such as Miss Universe, Miss International and Miss World.
The incident also prompted the country to land on Twitter Philippines’ trending list as well.
A Twitter fan tagged Catriona and shared a meme referencing the inadvertent slip-up.
“@catrionaelisa No to Valenzuela! Yes to Venezuela, hahaha (you’re) so cute, muning,” the fan wrote with a heart emoji.
“Muning” is used by Filipinos to refer to a cat, which is also the beauty queen’s nickname.
Catriona read the post and quipped the following with emojis of a rolling-on-the-floor laughing face and a peace finger: “Ito po ang sagot ko kay Tito Boy, when it’s okay not to be okay. Char.”
Her post has earned more than 7,400 likes on the microblogging platform as of writing.
The beauty queen’s tweet is a reference to veteran host Boy Abunda’s question to Miss Iloilo Karen Laurrie Mendoza in the Q&A portion of the competition.
“Ngayon madalas nating naririnig, it’s okay to not be okay. My question is, when is it okay not to be okay? And when is it not okay to be not okay?” the “King of Talk” asked.
“You know, sometimes, it’s hard to move on especially that if we lost our loved ones, when we’re depressed, when we have anxiety, but most of all, when we want to move forward in life,” the 25-year-old Ilongga beauty answered.
“You know, my favorite saying in a movie Disney, ‘Inside Out,’ is embrace your sadness because in embracing your sadness, you will feel happiness afterwards,” she added.
Tito Boy’s question gave birth to various social media memes made by pageant fans who attempted to answer him in their creative ways.
Netflix Philippines on Monday also joined the trend and shared a screengrab from the South Korean romance drama series “It’s Okay to Not Be Okay” as a reference to his question.
The Binibining Pilipinas 2021 pageant winners are Miss International Philippines Hannah Arnold, Miss Grand International Philippines Samantha Panlilio, Miss Intercontinental Philippines Cindy Obeñita and Miss Globe Philippines Maureen Montagne.