How to prepare yourself for Beauty Pageants – A Beginners Guide
It’s true that your personality is an inborn trait and it’s also correct that the best way to develop your personality is to stay positive always. By Ankita Borthakur
From my personal experience, I would like to share some basics with those who are surfing the internet right now for some guidance on beauty pageant preparation. But before I write on how to prep yourself, I want each girl to know that she is beautiful- with or without makeup. Every girl at some point in her life have surely dreamt that one day she would have a crown on her head just like our newly crowned Miss World Manushi Chillar, and no one can take away this right from us to dream about being crowned and become famous. After all, who does not want to be looked upon as an inspiration by thousands of ladies! There are some who turn this into a reality and there are many who keep thinking about how to take the first step towards it.
So, let’s know the basics of putting the right foot towards pageantry:
Developing Your Personality
No need to ask anybody, just feel that you are beautiful. This is my mantra every day. I never let anybody make me feel other than beautiful. But yeah! There is a thin line between boasting and acknowledging your own beauty. Boasting is unpleasant, and you should know that pageantry is about pleasing people. Kindly practice the art of pleasing people on their face.
Our body hates starving. So, we need to understand our body and feed it properly. I suggest not to go for any crash diet course as it makes your body suffer in the long run. I saw my co-contestants look pale on the finale of our international pageant. Trust me, having no glow on your face during a beauty contest is the last thing you would want to experience. Plus, you may find it impossible to upload your pictures on your social media pages.
Don’t be a couch potato. I know sleeping and lazing around is so cool, but being physically fit is one key aspect for success in any beauty pageant- you need to look good in the clothes you wear on the ramp and look confident in front of your competitors and judges. But kindly don’t misunderstand physical fitness with “Skinny Figure”. I’m not skinny - I’m just fit.
Embrace the Power of Yoga. It is very important that you remain calm during the chaotic environment of a pageant. Lots of bickering, back biting, grilling schedules and late-night grooming involves in any national and international pageant. Ask me, I went completely crazy initially. But yoga helped me maintain my cool and a smiling face.
Little Help from Personality Development Course Can Crisp you up. Yes, it’s true that your personality is an inborn trait and it’s also correct that the best way to develop your personality is to stay positive always. But some of us need special classes to groom those traits so that they get polished faster than usual. There are many institutions which provides such short-term personality development courses to help you fit in anything easily. Get yourself enrolled in such courses because your personality helps you gain extra marks and extra eyes from the pageant jury.
Dressing Yourself Up
Right Lingerie never lets you down. Let me stress on this- we Indian ladies are completely wrong when it comes to choosing our lingerie. Our graph in this matter goes as such: Nice color- Nice print- Nice looking- Bought! Please understand that there are a lot of things we need to look at- especially if at all the lingerie is apt for the type of dress we’re wearing. I learnt that I was wearing a wrong inner wear during my national pageant and this makes me regret even today, so no pictures of me in that outfit on social media!
It’s the person who makes the dress look right. I understand that no lady on this earth needs a guide on how to dress up well for any occasion. Even a 3-year old Sara Cruise knew what to wear and when. But there are ladies who still struggle to select the right dress according to their body type and hence lack confidence in wearing and carrying them. Be confident in whatever you wear because its not the dress people look at most times, they look at you!
Dresses and accessories go hand in hand. Some ladies are gifted with a great sense of accessorizing. But I learnt it the hard way that just wearing a wrist watch with your dress would not solve the problem, you need to give a good look at your ears, hair, neck, fingers and nails too. I turned up to Google- Mata and learnt how to accessorize different dresses. The trend of accessorizing keeps on changing and the course of updating yourself will also continue with it. PS: Gold is not the only option with sarees!
Walking on Heels is an Art. Well you whether like it or not, but heels do exist in pageant industry. The worse is that even a 6.5 feet tall lady will wear a 6-incher! Please buy a comfortable pair of highs and practise from today so that you don’t feel uncomfortable in them ever. I’m a person who wears sneakers most times but when necessity knocked at my door, I bought one pair of pencil heels and started practising. Today, I’m a pro and can even dance on them.
Learning Your Make-Up
Be your own Make Up Artist (MUA). Best way to remain flawlessly beautiful is to learn and own your makeup. This art can be quite overwhelming for beginners as it involves a wide variety of tools and techniques, and trust me, it takes a lot of patience and months of practice to master it. People who knew me from my pre-pageant days can tell you that I didn’t even know how to put mascara properly but today they come up to me and ask how did I manage to learn my own makeup. Please remember to not expect makeup support during your pageant days, so better to learn how not to under-do or over-do your make up. I suggest you start practising on yourself, your best friend (not your dog), your mom or even a dummy when you learn a new trick. Smart tip: Do have a primer in your kit always.
It doesn’t matter where you learnt to use the brush, what matters is how you used it. Thankfully, today we have so many options to get trained in makeup which is especially helpful for those who are planning to take up a career in Beauty & Wellness. I learnt from everyone during my initial training days by paying small prices –an ice-cream to a friend who taught me how to apply foundation, a movie ticket to my parlour lady to learn how to apply blusher properly and recharged my data-pack frequently to access YouTube and refer to the tutorial videos available.
Other than these, there are so many other ways to learn makeup and hairdo professionally - like enrolling yourself into a course in some good beauty & wellness academy, approaching renowned parlours who trains and certifies, and so on. The tricks of makeup and hairdo seems to be a never-ending list and so the options to get trained is also humongous list.
Friends, these are some essentials I wanted to share to help young aspirers with their pageant prep. There are a lot of small-small stuff which you need to keep doing and discovering on your own. Like experimenting with different hairdo, knowing to hydrate your face, learning to keep your face clean etc. But these are mostly taken care of by you at your own level.
Check: Beauty & Fitness Colleges in India
About the Author:
Ankita Borthakur
Ankita Borthakur is Director-PR at Samadhan Abhiyan (NGO). She holds a BSc in Physics (Hons) and a management degree in Marketing. She’s a marketing and sales professional with 6 years of corporate experience. Ankita is Mrs Universe 2017 contestant, and award winner of subtitle 'Sincere Lady', and also a motivational speaker.
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