Five months ago on a Monday morning several girls were called to the office to receive letters. Everyone was confused as to what they were for, but when the girls came back to class they were beaming with satisfaction. Written on the letters were the words "Hello, you have been selected to participate in the Miss ----- 2011 Pageant!" written in tiny letters on the bottom of the page were the words "You are not obligated to participate, and you may inform any friends in grades 10 or 11 who would be interested in participating." Obviously they only wanted a select few to participate. I was not one of the lucky recipients of these letters.
Sadly for the committee of this pageant, only 3 girls out of the fifty they sent the letter to were able to participate! You can't exactly have a pageant with only three girls. Lucky for them, some of us lowly girls who didn't receive letters decided to send in applications to participate. Of course we were accepted into the pageant, because hey, they couldn't find anyone else. So this bumped the number of contestants up to a grand total of 8. And I was one of those 8.
Now, if you're curious as to what was going through my head when I decided to join this pageant I'll tell you. If you know me at all, participating in a pageant isn't exactly something you would expect me to do. But I love acting, so I thought it would be a great chance to get up on the stage and perform. And the number of volunteer hours you get from it looks really good on a resume. Thus, I joined.
Contestants had to meet for training meetings every Wednesday night from 6:00pm-9:30pm. The evening of our first meeting came, and I went with an open mind.
To tell you the truth, the first meeting was extremely awkward. We were completely silent the whole time, and not too keen on getting to know each other. My first impression of our training lady was that she was exactly like that lady off of Harry Potter . . . y'know, that one old lady who replaces Dumbledore and has the cat obsession and is extremely mean and strict? Well that's exactly like our training lady . . . she even LOOKS and DRESSES the same! Sadly, my first impression of her was bang on. She was a very mean person throughout the entire pageant.
After several meetings, all of us girls finally started coming together and becoming friends. None of us were the stereotypical "pageant girl" and we all shared a mutual hate for the previous year's winner of the pageant who had been helping with our training. She WAS the stereotypical pageant girl, with her hair extensions, fake smile that never left her face, and not to mention she was a spoiled brat (although she was careful not to show that around the trainers.)
Wednesdays were torture. For three hours every Wednesday we would do the following, never doing anything else to make it more exciting: practice walking in high heels, inform the group of a current event, practice speech, and practice the opening number dance.
That is what we did every single Wednesday for five months to prepare for pageant night which was June 3rd.
To advertise for the pageant, our pictures were in the paper along with a bio that we wrote ourselves so that people could "get to know us." We had a photo shoot where a "professional" photographer took a bunch of pics of us so that one could be used for our photo in the paper. Well . . . when the day the paper came out we were shocked. They had managed to put in the paper the worst possible picture they could find of every single one of us girls! And as if to make it worse, they edited our bios! They completely edited what we wrote to make us sound like airheads! In my bio it said where I lived and who I lived with. I wrote: "I live in ---- with my mom ----, my dad ----, and my sister ----." In the paper it was written like: "I live in ---- with my mom, ----, my dad, ----, my sister, ----." They completely messed the grammar up. The way they wrote it makes it sound like I live with three randoms in my house plus my family!
No wonder people get the impression that some pageant girls are airheads . . . look what the media does!
Anyways, pageant night finally came. All us girls got our hair done and we were ready! Before the pageant at 7:00pm, we had to have private interviews with the judges. The interview was worth a lot of points so a lot of the girls were worried about messing it up. Now, prior to pageant night, I had been thinking a lot about if I really wanted to win. The answer was no. I didn't want to win! I was actually extremely worried because I had a good chance of winning. I didn't want to win when someone probably more deserving could win. Besides, I couldn't stand having to deal with the training lady for another year which is what you'd have to do if you won. So when it was my turn to have my private interview, I sabotaged myself. I answered the judges questions in the weirdest ways possible. When I left that judging room, I left the judges with unimpressed looks on their faces. Perfect.
That evening, we watched as the room filled up with hundreds of people waiting to watch our pageant. I had the job of comforting many of the girls who were completely freaking out over having to go on stage in front of all those people. Me, I'm perfectly fine performing in front of lots of people but all the other girls were terrified.
Our first segment was our opening number dance routine which we did to the song "Firework" by Katy Perry . . . only the "Glee" version of it. The opening number helped to ease all the girls nerves because after that their fear disappeared.
After the opening number dance was our sponsor speeches to advertise for our sponsors. After that, the first four girls did their big speeches on a topic of their choice. Following that, we did our frugal fashion show which is just this fashion show thing where we find clothes at the thrift store that fit in with a certain theme which was the 80's. We had a maximum of $10 to spend on our outfits. Surprisingly we found quite a bit of stuff for our outfits!
After the frugal fashion show, we all did our talents. My talent was a comical monologue about a shopping spree. It felt really good to get on the stage and act. Then the last four girls did their speeches, I was second to last and my 4 minute speech was entitled "Facebook: Good or Bad?"
Then came the fun part. After all the speeches and talents and everything was completed, it was time for the evening gowns. One by one we filed onto the stage wearing beautiful dresses, each one of them suiting the girl perfectly. It was my turn to go onto the stage and I confidently walked out and took the grumpy (yes grumpy) RCMP officers arm and walked across the stage in my strapless green gown. Once all the girls had had their turn on the stage we had to answer an impromptu question which defiantly wasn't very fun but we all answered the questions well.
The judges then left the room to decide who to pick for the Queen (winner) and the Princess. The judges were gone for an entire hour trying to decide who to pick! Finally, the reentered the room and handed the envelope to the MC who announced the winner. The winner was NOT me which I am thankful for, but the winner WAS who I hoped it would be. The winner was the girl who needed the scholarship (which you get if you win) the most. She had no idea that she would win, but I had hoped from the beginning that it would be her. I couldn't have been more happy for her.
After the pageant, she told me countless times that she wished I won princess so I could be with her, but I was so thankful I hadn't. Being an ambassador of my city isn't something I could really handle. I also had multiple strangers come up to me after and tell me that I should have won and they were all betting on me to win. I thanked them, but laughed inside because I was so ecstatic that I didn't.
The day after the pageant was a parade where we got to ride on a float wear our dresses and wave for an hour, which let me tell you really hurts your arm after a while. After the parade was over, lots of people kept crowding around us to talk to the winner of the pageant, no one seemed to care about us non-winners, which I was totally fine with.
So, basically what I've learned from this experience is that pageants aren't for fakes and that you actually have to work really hard in them. I've also learned that the people who RUN the pageants can be pretty old fashioned and not all that fun to be around, but you learn to tolerate them.
But the most important thing I've learned is to stay myself no matter what and not change just cause I'm in a pageant. Oh . . . and I learned how to walk in high heels without falling over! Woohoo!
When people ask me if all that training was worth it, I tell them yes. The training was definitely worth it and I'm so happy that I decided to go onto the pageant, it was a really amazing experience.
Congratulations to the winner of the Miss ------- Pageant. You deserved it.
-ocean10kv
