What It's Really Like To Compete In A Beauty Pageant

Last year Miss Universe’s judges were all female. Miss World has done away with the swimsuit round. But has anything else really changed in the world of beauty pageants? Salma Haidrani entered to find out

- Salma Haidrani

My ankles feel close to buckling. They’re strapped into five-inch, diamante-encrusted heels, and are barely visible underneath my floor-length sequin dress. I’m hovering at the top of a set of stairs, leading to a stage. I feel as though I’m surrounded by butterflies; a cluster of women resplendent in coordinating, shimmering jewel tones, their delicate bodies quivering as they await their turn. One of them wrings her hands and cricks her neck to the left, and then to the right. But they must keep waiting. Until I’ve had my turn. A microphone is thrust into my hand. I place my other on my hip, take a shaky step out into the spotlight. I am here to win Miss World.

Three months previously, my parents were staring at me, goggle-eyed over a Sunday roast, their forks suspended in mid-air. “But, but… you have a degree,” spluttered my mum. I’d just broken the news to them that I have been accepted to compete in the Miss London heats, the first step (on a long road) to becoming Miss World (prize money: $100,000). It could be, I tell them, life-changing. But they remain unconvinced. I can’t blame them. Becoming a beauty queen is no longer the lofty, aspirational career choice it was in the ’60s. Back then pageants were televised to millions and made instant celebrities out of the women who entered them, offering many a chance to escape their quiet hometowns. Then, slowly, they slipped out of fashion. There were, of course, the protests (at Miss World 1970, held in the Royal Albert Hall, the Women’s Liberation Movement chucked flour bombs at those entering), but also, as is the way of many things that grip the nation, we simply got a bit bored. Unlike in China and South America (where they’re still huge events), ask any twentysomething in the UK and they’d struggle to name a single beauty queen. The competitions haven’t been televised on the main channels since 2001.