Like most dates, someone waits; it's a classic power move. You'd expect Miss Universe, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, to come up with an outfit malfunction or a makeup mishap excuse for being late; instead it's a self-defence workshop in the sweltering Johannesburg heat.
It seems Nel-Peters is perfectly able to look after herself. In June she was hijacked at gunpoint by three men. Thanks to her self-defence training she was able to punch one of the assailants in the throat before running away in six-inch heels.
She arrives at The Maslow hotel in Sandton sans sash or crown, but armed with a presidential-like entourage. I expect to see what perspiration looks like on symmetrical perfection. I am disappointed. Normal people sweat, Nel-Peters doesn't. She glows.
The former Miss South Africa, now Miss Universe, is on a homecoming tour after winning the competition in November. It has been two months since the 22-year-old began wearing the coveted Miss Universe sash like a coming-of-age tattoo.
She looks like the latest cast member of Twilight, glistening as we make our way to a private room at the hotel.
Having just devoured a pack of jelly babies, she declines the lunch offer. Most of us would not regard a packet of sweeties as a meal, but that's beauty queens for you.
Ideally she would've ordered chicken and salad, but having been awake since 4am, she doesn't have much of an appetite. Most of us would be ravenous at this point, but again, that's beauty queens for you.
Bankers get paid to crunch numbers, writers get paid to write, so it stands to reason that a beauty queen would get paid to be beautiful. Every hair is in place, muscles lean and toned and skin radiant. But for Nel-Peters, there is no external pressure to look good or stay in shape, it's a lifestyle she'd developed in high school.
"I've always strived to be the best version of myself; I put pressure on myself because I want to take care of my body. This is all I have. To me it's one of the most wonderful things to be able to eat healthy and nourish my body and exercise. I feel good when I exercise. I've never seen it as a punishment or a weight on my shoulders."For her it's not just about "having a pretty face" but about having a strong sense of who she is, what she stands for and her passions. She's not campaigning for world peace but hoping to inspire young girls to achieve their dreams in the same way that her Miss South Africa and Miss Universe predecessors inspired her. She jokes about wanting to fix one eyebrow which has a gap in it.
In a world where beauty is the equivalent of an ace in a deck of cards, it's obvious that it comes with certain perks. On a flight from New York to Las Vegas before the Miss Universe competition, a flight attendant kept bringing her water and snacks even though she never asked for anything. Her initial assumption was that the attendant was a pageant fan. She was wrong.
"Just before the flight landed I got another bottle of water and another packet of snacks with a note asking if I'd go to dinner with him. I obviously declined," she says.
Offering bottles of water to anyone from the Western Cape seems like a good pick-up line, but it didn't work on this Sedgefield beauty.
It may be because someone else had already offered her water and he's had her heart ever since. But there is no chance of getting a name or even an anniversary date out of her. When you scroll through her Instagram page, there's no picture of her "Man Crush Monday", which seems an achievement in itself.It may be because someone else had already offered her water and he's had her heart ever since. But there is no chance of getting a name or even an anniversary date out of her. When you scroll through her Instagram page, there's no picture of her "Man Crush Monday", which seems an achievement in itself.
Although she's filling her passport with stamps and living her dream in New York, it hasn't been an easy transition for the small-town Afrikaans beauty. There were some things she couldn't learn from binge-watching TV series. In her short time in the US, Nel-Peters has quickly learnt to watch her words and her jokes.
Her six-month stint as Miss South Africa was also not short of PR blunders.
"Glovegate", as she refers to it, saw her being labelled a racist on social media. What was supposed to be a good deed, which would provide the necessary poverty porn that beauty queens and presidents revel in, became a publicity nightmare. Photographs of Nel-Peters wearing gloves at an orphanage while posing with kids went viral.
The assumption was that she wore gloves because she was working with black children. This narrative couldn't have been further from the truth. Nel-Peters was one of a team of volunteers serving sandwiches at the orphanage, and it's standard protocol to wear gloves when working with food. When she was done handing out food, some kids asked her to take some pictures of them with her; without hesitation she obliged.
That incident would be the dress rehearsal for the US, where race relations are strained, to put it mildly. What was meant to be a joke turned into the first incident. When comedian and TV host Steve Harvey asked her what she thought his question would be, she joked that she thought he'd ask her about her pet lion, given that that was the stereotype people had of South Africa.
She commented that South Africa was safe and invited Harvey to join her on a safari to experience wildlife. The following week, during an interview with a newspaper, she was asked why she would invite Harvey to South Africa to hunt. She realised that they'd mistaken a safari for a hunting trip.During a radio interview she spoke about her love for South Africa and referred to "coloured people". In America, "coloured" is offensive and she had to apologise.
"I felt really bad in the moment, but my intentions were pure and I didn't mean anything bad by it. But I'm only human, I'm not perfect. I'd just moved to New York and I wasn't even living there for a week when that happened. I kind of forgave myself and it will obviously never happen again and I'll be more cautious and respectful."
Navigating her way around murky cultural waters has been tricky. What has also taken time to adjust to is the overwhelming response she gets from people when they meet her. Some people get so caught up in the moment that they cry, others just want to touch her. During one of her international trips, she was accompanied by five security guards and while walking through the crowd, people were touching her feet, hair, arms and any part of her they could.
"People just get so excited and want to touch you. It gets very overwhelming. I don't get scared because I know they have no bad intentions but your personal space gets so violated. That is something to get used to and in a way I try and see it as - imagine if they weren't excited to meet me," she says.
There are other times when she's slightly out of her depth. At the Golden Globes she felt like she was walking into a party where everyone knew each other and she'd only ever seen them in pictures.
"I think just being in a new environment with new people to adapt to ... now I'm going to events and I'm starting all over again because I don't know anybody. When I started as a finalist for Miss South Africa, I also didn't know anybody. I moved from Sedgefield, a very small town. I started as a nobody, down at the bottom," she says.
For some, the 2018 Golden Globes will be remembered as the year the awards proved relevant. In light of the allegations of sexual abuse against film producer Harvey Weinstein which sparked the #MeToo campaign, Hollywood elites showed their support by wearing black.
Nel-Peters also wore black in support of the movement, although she has never been sexually assaulted. She commended the women across the world who were brave enough to speak out."It takes one person to implement change and it takes one person to stop a man from doing the same to another woman. Men need to realise that there are consequences for their actions. What I loved about the Golden Globes was how many men also wore black and also wore the Time's Up pin. It's so important for men to realise you are not going to be uncool by standing up for women's rights and standing up for basic things that women need to be respected for."
For our lunch date, Nel-Peters also wears black, but this time for her own campaign, Unbreakable, which she launched as part of her Miss South Africa reign after the hijacking. This traumatic ordeal became the cornerstone of her Unbreakable campaign to empower women, which she hopes to take all over the world.
At this stage the date is going well; she's slightly dropped her guard, or perhaps allowed exhaustion to play a role.
Nel-Peters is undoubtedly well put together: opinionated and with a depth and authenticity which shatters every stereotype about beauty queens. The stereotype angers her, but she sees it as a challenge to prove people wrong.
With her determination she could be president for a day and, after "Glovegate", she might implement certain regulatory laws for social media. As a born-free, she believes in freedom of speech but maintains that with this should come respect.
"I honestly feel that people should be held to account for what they say on social media, because anybody and everybody is allowed to have an opinion on everybody and everything. I think there should be a law put into place on social media - you should get fined for making false accusations."
Nel-Peters is a cheap date, the type who orders only water for lunch.Not only does the conversation flow but it is about more than world peace and haute couture.
She'd score a second date and hopefully it would include her favourite New York cheesecake in Times Square.
Not just water, please!
FACTS ABOUT DEMI-LEIGH NEL-PETERS
• She has a Yorkshire terrier named Benji, who moved with her to New York.
• Books on her bookshelf: The Alchemist (read); The Year of Yes (reading); #Girlboss;The Confidence Code.
• Favourite comedians: Trevor Noah, Schalk Bezuidenhout and Bouwer Bosch.
• Top five cabinet ministers if she were president: Thuli Madonsela, Oprah Winfrey, Gal Gadot, Angelina Jolie and Lewis Howes...