Young as she is, Bettina is now looking towards becoming a positive figure for young Filipino women.

Twenty-three year old Bettina Carlos has always seen life as a constant effort to find a happy medium.

Whether it be in academic matters, or in the progress of her career, she believes that the best way to go about things is to find a compromise.

This point of view certainly comes from personal experience. As a high school student at the University of the Philippines Integrated School (UPIS), Bettina was happy to have her life revolve
around her studies and volleyball.

It wasn’t until her parents suggested that she join a personality development workshop that Bettina began to consider what the world beyond what she had gotten used to. From then on, she went into modeling, and then commercials, and then GMA got her as a talent.

But through all these, the academic life was something Bettina found hard to just leave behind.

“It wasn’t an ugly scenario. If I didn’t like it, my parents were okay with me not doing showbiz anymore,” she says. “My compromise was that I didn’t get to do a lot of the things that I wanted, which was to mingle with my friends. It was more of us meeting halfway.”

STUDIES FIRST

The decision to plunge into the world of showbusiness would prove to be a good one, as Bettina would find out that projects were not lacking for her. After successful acting and hosting stints in ABS-CBN and GMA, Bettina could have easily moved on to bigger things. She, however, had other things planned for herself.

“There came a point that I said to myself that I want to enjoy my college life. This will be the last four educational years of my life, and I wanted to make the most of it. I didn’t want to care about anything but studies and not have to bargain with my time. I took less and less jobs, and then I graduated. I was okay with it, because I knew it was what I wanted,” says Bettina.

The decision to temporarily leave showbiz and pursue a degree in Communications Technology at the Ateneo de Manila University would prove to be the best decision she has ever made.

“What I like the most about my college is that no one cares where you came from, and I enjoyed that freedom. I got to study and hung out after school, Normal people of my age are just studying and work only comes after that. I wanted to feel that and I attained that,” she says. “I also got to enjoy partying! If I had been working at the time, I would not have enjoyed it as much.”

Nevertheless, she credits her showbiz work for honing her into the well-adjusted young lady that she is now.

“The things I learned from work is more about human relations and pakikisama. When you enter college from high school, there is a whole new mix of people from different walks of life that you have to mingle with. I understood where these people were coming from,” she says.

SHE’S BACK!

Now armed with a degree, Bettina has a showbiz agenda to fulfill. Already, she has a column in a daily tabloid where she writes about the issues closest to her heart.

“Acting and hosting are a continuous learning process, especially if you work with veterans. With hosting, you get to talk to different people, and you learn from them. There are many things we can do to educate ourselves, and I want to use what I do as a medium to further that. By writing, I reach out to people who are marginalized in society and can only afford to read tabloids,” Bettina says.

Young as she is, Bettina is now looking towards becoming a positive figure for young Filipino women.
“I’m a big advocate of women empowerment. I want to fight for women’s rights. Women shouldn’t be treated as the lesser sex. Being a woman shouldn’t mean that I will be less capable of the things one can do. I want women to accept that you can be beautiful in what God has given you,” she says.

She looks to the examples set by talk show hosts Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks who have been able to make something of themselves despite the odds being stacked against them.

“Aside from being women, they’re African-American. That’s twice a minority but they were able to stand up and uphold their persons. I also look up to single mothers, because it’s hard to raise a family. You really have to work, kahit na may asawa ka. Eh di mas lalo na kung ikaw lang mag-isa,” Bettina states.

Ideas like these don’t necessarily go hand in hand with commercial success in the entertainment industry, but just as with everything in her life, Bettina is willing to be patient and compromise.

“You don’t have to make people look at you. I believe everything happens in God’s time. I’m thinking that God wants me to enjoy the time I still have with my family because when I start working again I won’t have that anymore,” she ends.