I have always been inspired by strong women although my definition of strong has morphed through the years.
When I watch TV, I tend to mostly enjoy shows with a strong female lead character. For example, a show like Alias was one of my favorite.
Female Badasses in TV & Movies
On Alias, Jennifer Garner played the main badass, Sydney Bristow, who lived a secret life working as a spy for the CIA. Her life was quite complicated. Over the course of the five seasons when the show aired, there was plenty of gadgets, roundkicks, action, conspiracies, exotic locations, crazy costumes and love to keep it interesting.
Aside from Alias, a movie where Jennifer Garner was again kicking ass, there was Elektra, the follow up movie to Daredevil. Jennifer Garner played a similar role to her character on Alias. One badass superhero named Elektra Natchios, assassin with a pair of sai as her weapon of choice. :)
Currently one of my favorite shows is Castle. Not only do I love anything with Nathan Fillion but Stana Katic’s character is just a gorgeous and fun counterpart to Fillion’s role of Castle.
The Secret Life of Scientists: Erika Ebbel
But enough about fictional TV characters, what I really wanted to talk about was a real, live person. To be more specific, I’d like to introduce you to Erika Ebbel.
Why A Pageant Queen?
One of my goals since I was a little girl was to be a pageant queen. I completed as a little girl but never as an adult until I entered the Mrs. Illinois America pageant in 2013. While I was doing research on past pageant winners I came across Erika’s story. And after watching the video below, I really wanted to share it.
Who is Erika Ebbel
To give you a little background, Erika Ebbel is a biochemist and she was featured on The Secret Life of Scientists. But…SURPRISE!…she also was Miss Massachusetts 2005.
Those two labels don’t typically go together but I want to leave it to her to explain how she wound up in the pageant world.
In the four part series below, Erika explains her background, in both science and pageants. The video is short and sweet and covers some fun and interesting reasons for competing in a beauty pageant. You can skip to the third part to find out more about her pageant life. I found that Erika provides a fun perspective on competition. I hope you enjoy hearing her story as much as I did. :)
My favorite quote from the video above is:
“I like to compete…competition encourages you to improve.” – Erika Ebbel
I whole heartedly agree.
