The glamour factor of Beauty Pageants attract a lot of eyes in the world of fashion as well as in the normal world. While everybody sees the winner and her performance, the efforts taken to reach that position is always overlooked. While everybody says that it takes loads of patience, determination, focus etc what nobody ever said is the amount of money you have to spend as a determined aspirant of a pageant. If we get into an approximation, the cost would be somewhere around 2-3 Lac rupees (INR) minimum, which is too much for a middle class family to sponsor. Hence, here we present few of the tips and techniques where a pageant aspirant can easily manage her finance to optimum level and still enjoy all the fun of being a pageant aspirant.

Tips to manage Finance while considering Beauty Pageants

1) Give yourself at least 2 years: Not everybody dreams of being a Miss World or a Miss Universe since childhood. Hence, if you ever think of winning a national title or an international title at a point, give yourself a time of minimum 2 years. This will help you in shaping up yourself into the mould of a beauty queen; which otherwise requires a lot of change into yourself suddenly and this will need you to pump in a lot of money. For example, you will need to change your styling, your body, your overall look, your IQ etc, which you can’t do immediately in natural ways and you end up paying more money if you try correcting things in short time by artificial means. Hence, improve yourself gradually and steadily with strategic investment.

2) Never invest too much in Parlours: Assuming that you would be participating after 2 years of your thought of being a ‘Miss XYZ’, don’t try to change your look suddenly by going to parlour every week. Instead we suggest you to use home-made beauty therapies, they ac slower but act very efficiently compared to the chemical treatments you take from parlours. However, you would require to read a lot over internet or books to find the correct solution, but this would be worth. Why to get facial done at a parlour at Rs. 3000-5000 when you can make as effective facial kit at home in less than 250 Rupees? Moreover, you find yourself more beautiful in parlour after getting treatments because of 2 reasons,

A) The lighting is much brighter than any normal day

B) You are mentally possessed by the thought that this treatment is going to make you look more beautiful

Hence, you end up feeling too good about yourself, but the same results could be achieved if you are using home-made techniques. Same goes for any other treatment. We suggest you to avoid investing too much in parlour for at least first 15 months of your preparation. You may invest more in last 2-3 months when you are actually going to take part. This will save tonnes of money.

3) Join a reputed Pageant Training School: Why we are emphasising on this factor is because most girls are raw when it comes to posture, ramp walk, diction & communication and most importantly the fact that they don’t understand the actual requirement of pageants. Few girls still think that answers of ‘Mother Teresa’, ‘World Peace’ & ‘Nelson Mandela’ would still work every time but a strict NO. These training schools will find the flaws into you and help you focus on your strengths while parallelly correcting your weaknesses. Tiara is one such reputed Pageant school in India ran by Ritika Ramtri and Pageantology is another institute ran by Shandi and Susie, former Miss USA, in USA. The investments in these school are totally worth, and as far as we understand, they are not that costly.

4) Focus on Fitness, not the ‘GYM’: Many girls end up registering in hi-tech Gym Centers and some even dare hiring a personal trainer. This is not a problem if you are from a well to do family, but it becomes a problem when you start losing interest from fitness centres because most fitness centres will tempt you to be fit immediately, which over a period of time will exhaust you, but will never teach you to develop a healthy lifestyle, yes this includes even those gyms where you are paying Rs. 5000 a month. They charge you this amount for providing Air-conditioned rooms, good-looking receptionists, aromatic air fresheners, lockers, rest rooms etc. What we suggest is you focus more on developing a healthy lifestyle than directly focusing on an extremely toned body in 6 months. You may read books by Rujuta Diwekar which helps you focus more on your food habits and correct forms of exercises, you won’t require a personal trainer then. Moreover, reading such books will also help you stay positive and improve you knowledge.

5) Never Undergo KNIFE: This is the worst sin you can ever do to your body. Until and unless you are extremely disproportionate at some feature, we discourage you to even think of it. Because, undergoing knife takes a lot of money and if you don’t win the pageant, it will be all waste of energy and money. Moreover, in a longer run, surgeries tends to show negative impacts at times. Normal human being has a general tendency to over judge their look and find more flaws in themselves than they really have. Learn to LOVE yourself and you will see a lot more beautiful person.

Also Read: Venezuela’s Plastic Surgery Strategy: Fair or Unfair?

6) Don’t go by BRANDS: We suggest you not to get too tempted by BRAND names even for normal products. It’s your call to buy a make-up of Mac or Lakme or Elle, all would do equally well with different costs. Keep one thing in mind, is it worth investing more for the same product that you are getting at lower rates just for the TAG? Not every Zuhair Murrad gown wins Miss World or Miss Universe. Try to get your wardrobe locally than going by brands. Keep it good and simple rather than complicating it by going on Big Brands. Sometimes, even the local designers may help you design much better gowns. Only thing is you might need to take some efforts in finding one. This will help you save a lot of money.

7) Study the Pageant before participating: You can’t generalise pageants in a particular form. Every pageant has different criteria for the selection of their winners. For example, a banging body at Miss Universe may help you in reaching closer to the crown compared to Miss World where they focus a lot more on the behaviour of a girl before body. Doing charity work helps you to stand out in Miss World amongst the front runners but not at any other pageants as such. Similarly, participating in Miss USA and Miss America requires completely a different type of training. Miss USA focuses a lot on presentation of a delegate whereas Miss America focuses a lot on the internal confidence of a delegate. Hence, if you think of planning to participate in a pageant, national or international, first thoroughly go through that pageant, study their past winners and their performances through youtube or whatever videos are available. Also try to understand on what organisation is looking for in to their winners. This will help you a lot in winning the crown. This factor doesn’t save you money directly but it helps you in making your investment worth at the end of the day.