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 First Pageant Story In February of 2006 at our local mall I saw an advertisement about a mall beauty pageant for children and girl's zero to twenty-seven. I thought it would be fun to do and told my five year old daughter about it, she wanted to immediately. I had no idea what kind of clothing she needed to enter, so I looked up the pageant on line and went by some of the dresses I saw on the previous winner's, something formal. So she and I searched Ebay looking for the most economical and most appealing dress we could find and we found several dresses that we wanted. She finally settled on a flower-girl dress that was new for about sixty dollars with shipping, all white with some pink trim that just met the top of her little ankles. Shoes and socks were next, back to the pageant website, white Maryjane shoes and the frilliest ruffled anklet's you can find.
We searched high and low for these Maryjane style white shoes, they ranged from five to sixty dollars, I settled on a pair of five dollar Walmart specials that looked like Maryjane's. For the socks I searched all over but just could not find anything frilly enough to match what I wanted not even on line. I found two hair scrunchies that looked exactly like the socks on the previous winners in the local clothing store and had the bright idea to sew them onto a pair of white anklet's from Payless total cost six dollars. The hair style, it had to be beautiful and appropriate for a five year old, I was thinking a high curly ponytail. Checking the local beauty supply the morning of the competition, unfortunately I forgot this crucial step until what seemed like the last minute. I found a beautiful long, curly, clip-on pony tail that matched my daughters hair for thirty-two dollars. I slicked back all of her shoulder length hair into a top-knot, combing the bangs in a swooping style across her forehead, added some pink pearl bangles over the top of the natural ponytail then secured the clip-on on top, poof a five minute hairdo for thirty-two dollars. Â had seen on the website the past winners had on makeup, so I thought this one in the mall should not be that different. Playing dress up was the only time my daughter ever wore makeup. We did just that for the pageant, I lightly applied some pink eyeshadow, a bit of black shadow for liner, lightly bronzed her cheeks, forehead, and chin, a light dab of pink lip-gloss, and a little bit of Mascara to her top lashes. Perfect, she looked like a little angel!
We rushed to the mall, met grandma, and of course parked at the wrong end causing us to make a mad dash to the other end of the mall. We got there about two hours before the event started and there was quite a crowd already with limited seating, fortunately we found two seats. Registration was filling out a small pamphlet with information about the contestant: age, height, weight, hobbies, grade, favorite person and food, with a list of contest fees. Forty dollars for the beauty part and ten dollars for each side competition: Prettiest smile, hairdo, outfit, and most photogenic totaling eighty dollars. I did not have that much money with me so I only registered for the beauty. While waiting for the competition to start, I found there were mothers that had no problem making sly comments about the natural look being better and asking me if the ponytail was my daughters real hair. I guess they had not researched the previous winners before coming to this event. I tried not to focus on the negative, after all this was our first experience with the pageant world. I had never thought or desired to enter a pageant before, so this was all new to me.
The pageant finally started with my daughter's number slightly wrinkled and barely sticking due to not being able to decide where to stick it on her dress. After what seemed like endless babies and proud parent's parading across the stage, then the toddler's, finally came the pee wee division that my daughter was in all the girls were brought on stage together, then taken back off to await individual interviews. My daughter's number was called she came on stage, honestly I was a little worried she would freeze, to my relief she did beautifully responding to all the question's addressed to her like:: "What is your name and age?", "Do you go to school?", "What is your favorite color?", and "What is your favorite toy?" After they were all done interviewing the pee wee division they started calling the babies, toddler's, then pee wee division back for their awards. The pee wee presentation of awards was stressful for my daughter and I, after all I did not realize what entering all the optional event's would mean to my daughter. All the other little girl's had at least one or two awards, my daughter none. By about what seemed like the fifteenth award my daughter looked like she was about to cry, staring at me with a sad look on her face. Then they called first place and it was my daughter's name; she was handed the biggest trophy and a pageant title banner. That was a surreal moment to realize that my daughter had won over approximately fifteen other girl's her age. I could not have been more proud if she had been crowned Miss America! |
