The first time she stepped onto the stage, Van Engelen felt completely out of place, the 29-year-old told Observant just days before the Sunday finals. “It was a whole new world. I had to strike a pose like a proper Miss – hands on hips, standing tall, that sort of thing – but I didn’t have a clue. I do now, though. I’ve been practising nonstop these past few months, even walking in heels.” Her biggest fear? Tripping and falling at the critical moment – or worse, tearing her dress. A sudden eye infection only added to the stress. She’d already made a GP appointment to keep it from getting worse, she explained during the interview, because now that she was participating in the contest, she was in it to win it. “It would be odd not to admit that, wouldn’t it?”
Entering a beauty pageant had never even crossed Van Engelen’s mind, but she unexpectedly ended up on the list of candidates through her part-time job as a hostess at football clubs Roda JC and PSV. “I started working at Roda when I was eighteen. It was a student job”, she explains. “I welcomed guests in the business lounge and made sure they had a good evening. Later, I did the same work at PSV. I met lots of people from different backgrounds, and one of them brought up the pageant.”
At first, she dismissed the idea. “I wasn’t sure it was for me. But when I gave it some thought, I realised it could be a platform – something more than just a beauty contest.” The stereotypes –curled hair, evening gowns, swimsuit presentations, flawless smiles – are part of it, she acknowledged, “but there’s more to it than that. It’s also about your values and your story.”
Poverty
And Van Engelen definitely has a story to tell. She was born in Heerlen – “that’s where the hospital was” – and grew up in Hoensbroek, in a neighbourhood where, as she put it, “there was a lot of poverty. I didn’t experience it directly, but other children in the neighbourhood did. It shapes how you see the world. I was the first in my family to go to university. My dad worked at DSM, and my mum at Hema.”
Her parents always encouraged her to aim high, and she took their words to heart. Van Engelen enrolled in the Maastricht Science Programme to pursue a bachelor’s degree, focusing on biology and chemistry. “I was terrified. I was just a local girl who didn’t speak English very well, and suddenly I was expected to speak it all the time. I was hesitant – a timid little mouse.” But that shy first-year student is long gone. Van Engelen, who teaches in addition to her research, now lectures to three hundred Health Sciences students without batting an eye. “I think it’s fair to say I’ve grown”, she laughs.
Bo van Engelen, photo: The Light Portraits
It was during an internship for her master’s degree in Drug Development and Neurohealth, also in Maastricht, that Van Engelen’s eyes were opened. She abandoned her original plans of becoming a pharmacist or working for a pharmaceutical company. She couldn’t see herself doing it, “especially for the rest of my life. It made me stop and wonder what I really wanted.”
PhD opportunity
As if on cue, a PhD opportunity came up in the Healthy Primary School of the Future project, studying how proper nutrition and physical activity affect children’s school performance and health in neighbourhoods with relatively high levels of poverty, social disadvantage and health problems. “There’s not much knowledge about what’s actually healthy. My mum used to pack me a Capri-Sun every day, thinking it had fruit in it, but it’s basically just a sugar drink.” To Van Engelen, who is involved in another project studying how greener school playgrounds affect children’s well-being, it feels like a way to give back. “As a student, I learnt how to help people get better. Now, I get to help prevent people from becoming ill in the first place. How great is that?”
Her message is clear: always believe in yourself. “You can grow and thrive, even if you grew up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood. I hope that by participating in this pageant, I can be a role model for young girls – especially in academia, where they’ve got so much to offer.”
Whatever happens next, no one can take the experiences of these past few months away from her. And she may yet add a few more chapters to this part of her story: having won the Limburg title, Van Engelen will now move on to the national finals in May – and perhaps even the global finals in Thailand in November. It requires some adjustments to her schedule, which already has more commitments in the coming period. “I also have a conference somewhere, so I’d have to see if I could make it work…”
a month later. “Although I’ve actually got a conference around then, so I’d have to see if I could make it work…”