Choosing a Beauty Pageant Location

Series Summary

P.T. Barnum brought the first beauty pageant to America in 1854 and during the 1880s there were many photo pageants held by newspapers around the country. Miss America is the nation’s largest pageant and began in 1921. During World War II, pageant beauties sold bonds and pageants were held to entertain the troops. Beauty pageants consist of competition in areas such as talent, judged interviews, swimsuit and evening-wear modeling, and platforms.

For anyone who has watched a beauty pageant knows it looks elegant, calm and collected on the stage. Behind the scenes, however, it is a frantic world of chaos where everyone is hurrying to run somewhere else, change clothes and makeup and redo their hair before entering the stage again. If you think it sounds difficult to do that just imagine what it feels like to have to direct everyone! Stressful yes but it can also be fun and rewarding. Our expert, Erica Saylors, will walk you through all the plausible situations in every beauty pageant and giv eyou tips on how to make sure you pageant runs as smooth as any other.

Video Transcript

"The first thing that you need to do when you're choosing an even location for your pageant is to realize whether your even is going to be small or large. If it is going to be a large-scale event and you expect hundreds of people to come, then you might want to check out large places such as the Convention Center. They obviously have ample amounts of conference rooms of all sizes and are equipped for lighting, stages, and things like that. If you're going small scale with your even location, then you want to call up maybe a small theater such as the one behind me. You could also choose for a small or medium even, a place like a school auditorium where you would actually need to call the junior high or high school to contact the staff about that. You could use a church fellowship hall area. Those also are small enough, but they are equipped for the sound and everything that you need to run a pageant."