What does it really take to be a Queen?
Going for the Crown
By CHASE WILLIAMS
She pulled up in her white Honda CR-V blaring Britney Spears music, a pink Hawaiian lei hanging from her rear view mirror. Alex Collins danced her way from the parking lot to the front stairs while pushing her Chanel sunglasses up onto her freshly highlighted blonde hair. “You picked one of my favorite places to eat,” the beauty queen said in an excited high-pitched tone, flashing her perfect white smile.
A Texas Christian University student training for the 2011 Miss Fort Worth pageant, Alex wants to be true beauty queen inside and out. For a full year, the twenty-one-year-old Colorado native has been juggling school, friends, family, and now a pageant. As she orders her salad with no cheese, no dressing, and no croutons along with a tall glass of lemon water, she makes friendly conversation with the cashier. “It sucks sometimes that I cannot eat what I want, but that is the price you pay when you want to compete, and when you want to win.” Everyday food sacrifices seem to be the norm for pageant training.
TCU students might recognize this bubbly blonde’s face from the student-run news channel TCU News Now. Students may also remember that Alex as the 2008 Student Government Association freshman representative. With a campaign slogan like “She’s your gal, vote for Al,” it’s hard not to connect with the confident personality that Alex radiates. You can recognize her laugh a mile away, her positive energy is contagious, and she is so goofy sometimes you just have to smile, nod, and accept it.
Alex plans to graduate in 2012 with a Broadcast Journalism degree. “I chose broadcast journalism because I thought it was a smart move for me personally. I love public speaking and have a natural curiosity for things. My curious nature helps me in the reporting field because I get to investigate issues and stories.” Alex was the first ever TCU sophomore to be chosen for the competitive broadcast journalism internship for Fort Worth’s Fox affiliate. “I worked for Fox4 in Dallas. The morning shift was tricky because it started at 3:30 a.m. and I had an hour commute. I also worked a second job at a bakery, which did not leave much personal time. I wrote web stories and went with the reporters to help cover shots every day. My friends referred to me as the nocturnal girl, and that is surely what it felt like.” With her drive for school and the balance she maintains with internships, friends, and second jobs through the year, this coed has endless energy.
Alex got interested in the pageant world at a very young age. She started competing shortly after she went on a trip to Florida with her family. “I went to Disney World as a child and saw little girls wearing banners, or what do you call them, sashes? I thought I wanted to be like them one day.” Alex got started in pageants at age twelve. “I got started because I thought the girls were pretty, and I wished I could be too.” In her first pageant, she got first runner up. “That’s got to be a good sign, right?” she says with a sarcastic laugh.
This driven young woman was not the victim of stage parents as some may assume. “I started competing because I wanted to, not because someone told me to do so. I talked to some of our family friends and some of my friends from school were doing it, so I just followed what they did and really fell in love with pageantry.” Alex’s parents support her one hundred percent as an aspiring beauty queen and cannot believe she is competing at the level she is at today. “I don’t think my parents are proud of me because I have chosen to compete but they are proud because I do what I enjoy and am sometimes successful.” This 5’6” Barbie look-alike snagged her first title in 2006 at the age of sixteen when she was crowned Miss Colorado Teen. “From then on I gained a more competitive edge. Winning in high school changed my world for the better.”
Pageantry has blown up on the reality television circuit. Shows such as Toddlers and Tiaras and documentaries on MTV have showcased this competitive hobby in a negative light. Alex Collins argues that the media’s portrayal of all pageant queens as dumb and their parents as obsessed with fame is just not accurate. “I want to show the world that there is so much more to pageants. A pageant is an exhilarating experience. I compete because it is exciting and in a competitive environment. It builds you as a person and increases confidence. It provides the opportunity to make friendships and meet wonderful people.”
The 2001 film Miss Congeniality was one of the first movies to portray the life of a pageant girl. FBI agent Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullock, reluctantly goes under cover as Miss. New Jersey. Though Gracie does not care about her looks, she must transformation into a believable pageant contestant for the assignment. The film does a great job of showing the audience that even though these women may spray tan, wear too much makeup, and sometimes starve themselves they are very hard working, young professional, driven women. By the end of the film, Bullock has come to befriend a lot of the women she originally had doubts about. While it’s a stretch to compare Alex’s life to the film, she says the movie depicted some aspects of pageant life perfectly. “That is one of my favorite movies,” she says. “The movie does such a great job of bringing different scenarios and personalities of stereotypical women you could find in a pageant. I really do like how the movie portrays the women as all different, hard working individuals because I feel like that is who we truly are.”
Many people may think that pageant women are all beauty and no brains. The Miss South Carolina Teen USA answer that went viral overnight, racking up 50,000 hits on YouTube, seems to reinforce this stereotype. In the video, the judge asked Miss South Carolina why she thought one fifth of the American population cannot locate the U.S. on a world map. The contestant answered, “I believe that some people out there in our nation do not have maps, and we the government need to provide maps for Americans and the people of South Africa.” While many found her answer embarrassing, Alex Collins’ take on the situation was, “Can you blame her? It’s hard to imagine her situation unless you’ve been there. But picture yourself on a stage in front of thousands while knowing you’re being televised to millions with lights on you. I figure she was not listening to the question and scrambled for a response with what she did actually hear.”
In The Augusta Chronicle, columnist Mary Elizabeth Goodell reports that for young women who participate in pageants, the experience is more than a fairytale, more than playing dress up and smiling for the cameras. Goodell said all pageants aim to showcase women as individuals and give them the chance to become role models for younger girls. With a variety of titles to be awarded, girls in the pageant world work hard to claim the crowns.
Alex describes her hard work as her sport. “I treat competition like a sport. I consider pageants as an outlet for me to express my competitive nature. I was never a talented athlete so sports were never an option. But I treat my training the same way an athlete would train for a game.” The discipline these young women have to have is incredible. “You are conscious of your eating habits and your exercising. It is hard to slip up when you know you will be on a stage in front of a lot of people in a swimsuit. Try that for discipline.”
This is what training for a pageant looks like. Contestants eat lean meats, little dairy and no carbohydrates for an entire year. They invest two to three hours at the gym a day, four to six times a week. “When I felt defeated, my trainer pushed me harder, he re-inspired me, and then he would push me harder. Without my hard work, drive, and dedication to my goal I would not have had the confidence to walk down the runway at Miss America.” Alex works out for about two hours every day with her trainer, increasing her cardio and doing yoga every other day. She does see her personal trainer as a luxury. “It is very nice to have someone there to motivate me but I do not need it. It would feel that much better if I won knowing that I got there on my own, it would be a much more rewarding personal experience.”
Alex has had to alter her diet this semester. “I am not allowed to eat carbohydrates and cheeses, because those stick with you, and on stage that is the last thing you want people to see. There is also time and energy spent on stage presence and learning how to walk correctly. The way the women walk is much unlike the way you would walk down the street.” A beauty queen’s appearance can cost thousands of dollars. “If you want to be the best, you have to train to be the best,” says Alex. In the world of size zeros it is hard to stand out among the beautiful people. “I do not have a ‘go-to’ look that I give to the judges. I just try to be myself and hope that they appreciate me for that. I appreciate myself, which is what I think matters most.”
This past January, Alex wrote a column for the TCU Daily Skiff featuring another TCU beauty queen, senior Ashley Melnick, who took time off from school to compete in the Miss America 2010 pageant. “I thought it was really cool that there was someone I knew that was going to the ‘big time,’ but I would never take time off of school to compete. That is just not an option for me right now.” But she does want to compete in a larger and more competitive pageant one day. “I would love to compete and even win Miss USA. The opportunity to represent the organization would be amazing, I would feel honored to serve as a role model and represent the country on such a grand level.”
For now, Alex plans to compete this summer, going for the crown in Miss Fort Worth 2011. “I wanted to compete in a local competition, but still something competitive, so I kind of thought to myself the time is perfect for me to just do it. I mean, why not? So I did, and I am not looking back.” Alex finishes her lunch, checks her watch, and announces it’s time for her to meet her trainer.