After raising her children and teaching hundreds of children as a bilingual elementary school teacher, Marissa Teijo (Sebastian, Texas, 1952) captured local headlines in recent weeks: “71-year-old woman makes history by participating in Miss Texas USA pageant.” People were also surprised when she began winning bodybuilding contests in her forties, a skinny, portentous brown-skinned goddess, crowned one of the best in the world. bodybuilding American. The same skinny, gorgeous goddess who grew up and now inspires young girls who pose in bikinis alongside her, reminding them that beauty doesn’t come with an expiration date.
“Everything pays off if you work hard,” Teijo told EL PAÍS. And she certainly knows how to work hard. Teijo did not win the Miss Texas USA pageant; the crown went to Aarieanna Ware, a girl of African descent. But she left her mark on a pageant that only recently began allowing women of all ages to participate. Until last year, 28 was the age limit to aspire to any Miss Universe crown. Without that restriction, and at 43 years above that age restriction, last June Teijo broke the record for the oldest contestant in the history of the pageants.
The Latina girl who felt ugly
In the Panhandle Plain, Texas, one of the windiest regions in the United States, far from the glamour of buildings and lights at night and the shopping mallTeijo was a girl who worked summers on the farm with her family, hoe in hand plowing the land. Her father knew that in a few years he wouldn’t be able to pay for her and her siblings to go to college, and he took them with him to save most of their money for college. In that remote Panhandle of white girls, she was the only student who spoke Spanish at home, the only one with caramel skin. “We were different, the others had blond hair and blue eyes, in my classrooms I was the Hispanic. I always thought I wasn’t pretty, that I looked ugly,” she remembers.
Her parents are from Moctezuma, a town in San Luis Potosí, in western Mexico. “They didn’t have the opportunity to get a formal education, but they were incredibly smart,” she says. The money she earned wasn’t all for the future, part of it was to buy school supplies and clothes for back to school, and from there she chose the most “fashion, trendy, beauty”.
Years later, she left that plain in northern Texas and returned to the south, where she was born, in Texas on the border with Mexico. She married, had two children, became a teacher and separated. In the last years of the third floor, she crossed paths with Rachel McLish’s calves in the hallway.
“Do you know who Rachel McLish is?” she pauses and asks. No. Then she explains that she was the first Miss Olympia, at the time when Arnold Schwarzenegger became famous for being Mr. Olympia. “I remember seeing her walk and seeing her calf muscles, and I was fascinated. From then on I said: I want to have muscles like her. She didn’t have big ones, she was a tall, thin girl, very well formed,” she goes into details like a child remembering the best birthday.
McLish happened to be living in Harlingen, the same city in Texas where Teijo lived. She was the one who taught her and encouraged her to lift weights seriously. First with the motivation of looking good in a bikini on the beaches of South Padre Island, near her home. Later, with the idea of entering competitions, advised by a bodybuilder, who trained her without charging her. That’s how she learned to pose with her arms like Popeye, showing off a magazine-worthy body. A “wild power“I liked it because I started winning,” Teijo says with a laugh. “I wanted to do that and do it well.”
Late but sure love
Teijo’s small, shapely muscles attracted the love of her late 20s, an Argentine engineer she met on a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she went to learn more about teaching in local schools. This love has also been a story of adaptation and new things, especially after years of being single and independent.
“I didn’t know how to choose men before,” she confesses with humor. “But he was different; he is a very good person and very nice to me.” In the photos on her social media, they dance together, laugh together, travel together, eat and drink together.
She had been single for many years, she didn’t like being married and she did everything on her own. She bought her house and her furniture on her own, she made all the decisions for a long time. “Years went by and I got used to it, life is shared and it’s much better,” she says.
—Is twenty years a long time?
—Not that much! —he answers— remember how old I am.
An ‘influencer’ after Miss Texas
In the El Paso community, Teijo has been asked to make videos about his routines, and he does so, he uploads them to his Instagram account; he has been asked to be influencerand he does so, from time to time he goes to businesses of friends and acquaintances in the city and recommends them.
The competitions are behind him and, at 71, he knows that he can’t have the same routine as when he was in his 30s, 40s or 50s. He does cardio every day: walking, swimming, spinning or other sports. And three days a week he lifts weights.
She takes care of her diet, as she says she has always done: few processed foods, lots of water – a gallon when she was competing – and little sugar, an occasional taste of desserts and sweet things, those are the ones that make you gain the most weight, she notes.
“I learned to eat healthily from a young age, thanks to living in a farming community,” she explains, highlighting the importance of a healthy lifestyle for her physical and mental well-being. Happiness, she adds, is not having a slim, shapely body, because everyone’s body shapes are different. Happiness, she describes, is taking care of the body you have and keeping it in the best shape. She has told her daughter this.
Sometimes, Teijo says that she doesn’t escape the nagging thought of age, but she is positive: “When the idea of ’old’ crosses my mind, I say, ‘no, I don’t feel old, I’m a young-minded person’. I look in the mirror and I know that I can’t be like I was 30, but hey, I feel very agile, you know? I’m more realistic than imaginative.”
“Everything has its reward if you work hard. I feel very proud of myself, of having worked so hard; I am getting my reward now,” she says.
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