When Ivanna McMahon was crowned Miss Ireland earlier this year, her life completely changed.
She swapped her surgical scrubs for a crown and will spend the next 12 months representing the country nationally and globally.
After the dust settled on her win, VIP Magazine caught up with the doctor about life at the top.
“I’m so looking forward to doing something completely different! I’ll be going back to being a doctor after, but for now, I’m going to make the most of it all, as I said, and enjoy how different my life is going to be for a year!” she enthuses as she speaks about what the next year will bring.
The Miss Ireland stage is a far cry from the hospital wards where she had been spending the last few months after graduating early to help during the pandemic. However, it was that experience that pushed her to try out for Miss Ireland.
“This was something I always had an interest in doing and I just never put myself out there. I didn’t even give myself the opportunity to do something like this before! Covid really pushed me to go out of my comfort zone and go for something I’d always wanted to try,” she explains.
She’s an accomplished doctor, as well as a musician and she will be spending the next 12 months working with charities around Ireland. So does it bother her when the likes of Miss Ireland are brushed off as beauty pageants?
“You’re always going to have people that have different opinions, and you can’t control that. But from my experience, and having met the women that took part in the competition, I can say that they were all so incredibly intelligent, talented, so friendly…From my point of view, it is much more than how you look.
“Even from the charity work, which is such a big part of the contest — €50,000 was raised by Miss Ireland for charities in Ireland this year, so it does so much good. I think if people had more information on the competition and what it involves, then they maybe wouldn’t have that mindset.”
To read the full interview with Ivanna McMahon don’t forget to pick up the November issue of VIP Magazine on shelves nationwide now!
