As previously I think that there are many pre-conceptions about women who enter beauty pageants, they are often perceived as vain, high maintenance and full of self importance. I personally think that these seemingly negative qualities are inaccurate and what people are picking up on is high self confidence. To a certain extent these sort of competitions are superficial as generally speaking, it is attractive, conventionally beautiful women who enter. However, these women also need to be well spoken and articulate as they are ambassadors for their country, state, county, province, town or village. On Saturday 11th March I was crowned Miss Saint Helier 2017. My experience was very positive as I felt that the focus was definitely on the public speaking skills than the beauty aspect of the competition. I want to explore and research the ideas and history behind beauty pageants further before producing a response to my experience in the beauty pageant world as i was also a runner up for Miss Jersey Battle of Flowers 2016.

I want to create an idealised photo inspired by the official portraits taken of big beauty pageant winners. Above is the sash and tiara that I received from winning the Miss Saint Helier competition  and below is the dress that I plan to wear fro this shoot and also the Miss Jersey Battle of Flowers competition in June this year. I plan to use my pink backdrop for this shoot because I feel that the blue background with the blue dress and blue will simply be too much blue. Also the female connotations of the pink backdrop will work well with the image as well as providing contrast to offset the extravagant dress.