BABY BOY SHOWER INVITATIONS WORDING

Ruffa Gutierrez loves to shop for shoes that compliments her outfit and style.

STAR BYTES By Butch Francisco (The Philippine Star)
July 10, 2010 12:00 AM

Oh, I knew Ruffa as a pre-teen balikbayan in 1986. The lovely features were already in place (like most of her siblings, she inherited all the good traits of parents Eddie Gutierrez and Annabelle Rama), but the awkwardness was still there.
But by 1988, she began to blossom into a beauty and I know that we keep in our family albums this photo of hers where she poses with my niece Micheline and nephew Mikel, both still in pre-school then. They were just at home and Ruffa didn’t have a tinge of makeup and was sporting a simple pair of jeans. She was already starting to make a name for herself as a juvenile female lead and was considered one of the loveliest young faces in her generation. Little did I know that she was going to be even more beautiful much, much later.
In 1993, we found ourselves both working out at the now-defunct Excellance gym owned and operated by Telly Garcia, Lorna Tolentino’s best friend.
She was joining Binibining Pilipinas that time and one instructor told me that she still had baby fat at the back. Then, work around that! It was like a barking order and the instructor couldn’t understand why I was so concerned with Ruffa — fully unaware of our family ties.
Looking back, Ruffa’s physique wasn’t really a hundred percent perfect when she went to Miss World. I didn’t get to watch that pageant where she was named Second Princess since it was beamed live via satellite to Manila in the morning. But ask any objective Filipino beauty watcher and they will all tell you that Ruffa that time was far, far more beautiful than the first-runner-up — and even the one who won the title.
Ruffa had since focused more on hosting and she’s wonderful at it. I knew she had it from the beginning — having worked with her during the opening night of the Miss Universe pageant in Manila in 1994 (she was the anchor and I did a segment in the middle of the program). There were also two weeks when she pinched-hit for Cristy Fermin (she figured in a vehicular accident and had to be hospitalized) in the same year during those Showbiz Lingo days. Now, together they host Paparazzi with Dolly Ann Carvajal and Mo Twister.
Maybe it’s her attitude toward problems that helps buoy her up. In the process she learns from life’s little challenges and has helped her mature — turning her into a woman of substance. No wonder she had become even more beautiful not only on the outside and in the inside (in her heart), but also up there in her head.
She had finally become her own woman.
And oh what a beautiful woman.

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