A different Daiana
I met and interviewed Daiana Menezes two years ago for a cover story in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.
What I liked about her was her bubbly, extroverted self; it made me feel like I wasn’t a stranger during that first meeting. She even asked how I was, as I traveled all the way from Taguig to see her in Quezon City.
READ: Is Daiana Menezes in trouble?
But what really struck me was how quickly she picked up Filipino, from the time she arrived in the Philippines from Brazil for a modeling stint to becoming part of the host “dabarkads” of “Eat Bulaga!”
A love affair with PH and our people
She said being fluent so fast in the local language spoke of her love affair with the country and its people, and how she even thought of getting married to a Filipino and settle in the Philippines for good. While she kept mum about her travails and her relationships then, the happiness in her face was all too infectious and wiped out my own concerns for the day.
Reading her recent posts on social media and watching her on TV denying what was all too obvious about those posts made me sense a very different Daiana. Her expressive eyes seemed shadowed by a hidden story waiting to be told. While that impression may or may not be true, one thing is certain: the exuberance Daiana manifested when I met her two years ago had dissipated.
Her cryptic tweets seemed more plainspoken than she could have imagined. She underestimated the concern—more like alarm, really—of the people who followed her. To them, her posts seemed more like a cry of help other than just a way, she claims, of getting the attention of her now-husband Cagayan de Oro Rep. Benjo Benaldo.
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Big smoke, bigger fire?
She and her husband may fudge accusations of battery, but when she shows a photo of a cut on her arm following her disturbing tweets, this doesn’t look like just a ploy just to seek her husband’s attention. It is something that could really implicate him. (Is that why the photo was deleted?
Indeed the smoke billows like there was a big fire raging.
Daiana’s tweets were so provocative that even government and activist organizations fighting for the protection of women against violence have weighed in and offered assistance.
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Social media her hope?
But now that the couple sat side by side during a TV interview with “The Buzz,” her denial about what her tweets meant should be accepted and respected.
I only hope that she keeps her social accounts open and continues to update them.
Because notwithstanding her denials and how the public seemed to have gotten her message “wrong,” online social sharing may still prove to be Daiana’s hope.
