If outsiders werent allowed in the pageants, who came up with the theory....

[Mama2JML]

Sorry I was thinking of a different outfit.
I see now that you meant her weird black swimsuit with the slave sandal things (ribbons) and the filmy cover up. That outfit is all wrong for a pageant but I can see Patsy liking it. But anyway sorry I was thinking of a different costume she had.

Most kids don't wear a cover up during swimsuit, but I wouldn't make much of her taking it off during the routine. First it was swimsuit, she HAD to remove her cover up. And second, if you remove a piece of clothing during a routine you nearly always remove it mid-turn, while your back is facing the audience.

I'm sure Patsy bought videos. Nearly every parent buys the videos (unless they couldn't financially but Patsy wouldn't have that problem).
Generally you buy the videos so you can watch them to improve for next time- catch your mistakes and fix them.

It would be VERY interesting to know if any of the Ramsey's relatives or friends ever asked to borrow JB's pageant videos?

So, modeling bathing suits is the norm in child pageants? At what age do pageants begin requiring swimwear? I don't mean to sound naive, but I guess I am... :blushing:

 

[pageantmom]

Except Honey Boo-Boo and Mama June....

They're not pageant people. They only started doing pageants in order to get on tv. Mama June was angling for TLCs couponing show, but they wanted them to do the pageant show instead.

 

[pageantmom]

So, modeling bathing suits is the norm in child pageants? At what age do pageants begin requiring swimwear? I don't mean to sound naive, but I guess I am... :blushing:

Oh even the babies do swimwear in glitz pageants. Swimwear isn't normally required for age group titles, but if you're going for supreme titles it is, along with a few other events like photogenic and outfit of choice (and most people ARE shooting for supreme titles).
Here's a good example of a glitz swimwear. It's not like JonBenets at all- Glitz swimwears can be one piece or two pieces, but they don't have cover ups and most importantly they are BRIGHT colors NOT black and white. I just pulled one from Pinterest... I didn't want to put up a photo of an actual child.



Now if you're talking about natural pageants, (where kids don't wear makeup and they wear normal costumes), those pageants do not do swimwear for kids at all.
Some natural pageants don't even do swimwear for adults but many do..in natural pageants, swimsuit generally starts in the teen groups and sometimes not even til 16 or so. But never for kids.
Some examples of natural pageants are miss America of course but other ones are American coed, national American miss, Cinderella, USA ambassador, pure American pageants. There's a lot of natural pageants.
If you want to see a good example of a natural pageant for children google "Cinderella Tot".
I think jonbenet did a Cinderella pageant once..which tells me that Patsy DID know about natural pageants but still put jonbenet in glitz pageants anyway. Which is confusing, because if your goal is miss America, then really Cinderella is the best way to practice as a child, it's a natural pageant that's very similar to cinderella, and doing glitz pageants will not help you prepare for miss America at all and can actually hinder you since glitz pageants are frowned upon in natural pageant circles.

 

[Tadpole12]

So, modeling bathing suits is the norm in child pageants? At what age do pageants begin requiring swimwear? I don't mean to sound naive, but I guess I am... :blushing:

Heyya Mama2JML

I found this to be a very good link for pageant 101 info.

http://pageantstarsusa.blogspot.ca/p/the-pageant-spotlight.html

"SWIMWEAR Almost every glitz pageant includes a swimsuit competition which in itself is very much like the modeling competition. The girls show off their costumes, smiling and making eye contact with the judges. Sometimes depending on the pageant, a choreographed routine might be performed. Contestants can choose to wear either one piece or two piece bikini swimwear, but glitz swimwear, as one would expect for a glitz pageant, is enhanced with frills, bows and ribbons, and is often embellished with sequins, swarovski stones and rhinestones etc."

"One important move incorporated into a Western Wear routine is the ‘Rip Off’. This is when part of the costume, usually a jacket, cape, hat, scarf or skirt, is removed during the routine and is used as a prop."


********sprinkles********

 

[pageantmom]

Heyya Mama2JML

I found this to be a very good link for pageant 101 info.

http://pageantstarsusa.blogspot.ca/p/the-pageant-spotlight.html

"SWIMWEAR Almost every glitz pageant includes a swimsuit competition which in itself is very much like the modeling competition. The girls show off their costumes, smiling and making eye contact with the judges. Sometimes depending on the pageant, a choreographed routine might be performed. Contestants can choose to wear either one piece or two piece bikini swimwear, but glitz swimwear, as one would expect for a glitz pageant, is enhanced with frills, bows and ribbons, and is often embellished with sequins, swarovski stones and rhinestones etc."

"One important move incorporated into a Western Wear routine is the ‘Rip Off’. This is when part of the costume, usually a jacket, cape, hat, scarf or skirt, is removed during the routine and is used as a prop."


********sprinkles********

That's interesting, I haven't seen that before, I went ahead and read through it and I would say it's pretty accurate except for a couple of things.
Pro am isn't done like it used to be, you still have the expressions and turns but it just isn't the old style proam anymore.

Their section on Portfolios and the page they link it to is completely wrong.
They said you need photos onstage, a page of your photos of doing charity work, a list of titles you've won, list of your coaching, a mix of natural and glitz pics together etc, This is ALL wrong. They are saying your portfolio is also to be used to get modeling work and you should show your pageant wins and pics in there..but your modeling portfolio for entertainment work is completely separate from any of your pageant pics, child pageants are incredibly frowned upon in the modeling industry, you never mix them. My daughter does modeling (a little bit, not much) and we never ever mention her pageants.
However, I did notice that the website is selling these portfolios so they may be saying "you need this" because they are making sales on it.

They gave names to the various moves and expressions done, but, what I've found is that many coaches use different names for the moves, there isn't usually just one name for a move.
For example what they call "night night" in that article, I grew up when I was a kid in pageants knowing as "lullaby", and my daughters coach calls "precious face"...so, different names for different things.

They left off a few moves, but that's not a big deal. Two of my daughters favorite moves weren't on there...one we've generally heard called "pizzas" (holding arms up in a square shape as if holding trays up in the air) and another which is called "potatoes" (though we've also heard it called "boppies" and "chuckles") which is putting your fists under your chin and bopping your head with your lips doing the stupid duck face look.

The other thing I noticed on the site was they said glitz pageants double crown, in our experience most glitz pageants do not double crown, but natural pageants often do.
They also mentioned that "face pageants" generally do not allow much makeup, every face pageant my daughters been in has been full glitz makeup.
Oh and they said natural pageants often allow natural makeup. Sometimes they allow a little, but on the whole natural ones don't want makeup til age 12-13 EXCEPT for the optionals, like you can't wear makeup in formal wear or interview but you can wear makeup during talent because talent is a non-required category.

 

[ozazure]

How do most kids get into pageants? I ask because my daughter dances and I know it is a bit of a slippery slope between just doing an hour on Saturday to being involved in comps, in a troupe and then as a soloist - which is even more time and money. Like the first year I borrowed make-up for the concert and now we have a serious business make-up case full of crap, all our own hair styling equipment, expensive fishnets and dance underwear, bit by bit we gear up more and more and have more requirements to meet. It sounds like you are straight in the deep end in pageants. Do people just make do as they gear up, gather what they need and learn about it? Or do most people spend up in advance of their debut? Does the age you start make a difference? Like it'd be much easier to get by with less for a 2yo than a 6yo?

(totally not JB related, I am just curious!)

 

[DeeDee249]

How do most kids get into pageants? I ask because my daughter dances and I know it is a bit of a slippery slope between just doing an hour on Saturday to being involved in comps, in a troupe and then as a soloist - which is even more time and money. Like the first year I borrowed make-up for the concert and now we have a serious business make-up case full of crap, all our own hair styling equipment, expensive fishnets and dance underwear, bit by bit we gear up more and more and have more requirements to meet. It sounds like you are straight in the deep end in pageants. Do people just make do as they gear up, gather what they need and learn about it? Or do most people spend up in advance of their debut? Does the age you start make a difference? Like it'd be much easier to get by with less for a 2yo than a 6yo?

(totally not JB related, I am just curious!)

My daughter was a professional ballerina. It sounds like the big buck get spent when kids dance in dance schools/companies that are into competitions. My daughter started dance age 2, but professional classes age 8. My only expense was her pointe shoes- they were about $30 a pair then (she danced professionally from 1983-1993) I never had to buy a costume. The moms (usually me) did the stage make-up, which was mostly eye makeup. The ballet companies owned the costumes or rented them from larger companies. My daughter's company was strictly classical ballet- NO tap, lyrical, modern dance, jazz. My daughter wasn't allowed to take gym or participate in physical sports like skiing, ice skating, etc. Class was 6 days a week, 7 if there was a performance (like Nutcracker). There were weight limits that were in her contracts, mostly linked to how much the men were allowed to lift- 115 lbs was about average for a men's contract. If your weight was over by 2 lbs, your understudy danced that night. It you were over by 5 lbs, your understudy got the part. Not every company had such strict weight restrictions, but at least one company she danced with did.
It was a very different experience from the "dance moms" kind of training.

 

[pageantmom]

How do most kids get into pageants? I ask because my daughter dances and I know it is a bit of a slippery slope between just doing an hour on Saturday to being involved in comps, in a troupe and then as a soloist - which is even more time and money. Like the first year I borrowed make-up for the concert and now we have a serious business make-up case full of crap, all our own hair styling equipment, expensive fishnets and dance underwear, bit by bit we gear up more and more and have more requirements to meet. It sounds like you are straight in the deep end in pageants. Do people just make do as they gear up, gather what they need and learn about it? Or do most people spend up in advance of their debut? Does the age you start make a difference? Like it'd be much easier to get by with less for a 2yo than a 6yo?

(totally not JB related, I am just curious!)

People don't generally have a debut, it's not like they buy the stuff and practice in secret for months and then suddenly take the pageant world by storm.
Usually, you have quite a long period of being a newbie who is just trying to learn all this stuff, and your kid isn't really winning any big titles for quite a while because you're still learning.
Eventually you know more and you have the right things and you have the experience and then you start winning. (Although of course there is occasionally the odd time when someone brand new will just win right off the bat.)

In the past (prior to lots of people owning home computers) people usually found about pageants through:
-->just happening to meet someone already involved in pageants
--> seeing a preliminary that's being held in a shopping mall and daughter being interested by what she saw and mom picks up the paperwork to take home and look at
-->going to their county fair and seeing the fair queen pageant and then finding out there are other pageants out there besides fairs and festivals
-->getting an advertisement in their mail or seeing an advertisement in the back of a teen magazine

Getting an advertisement is how I started...my daughter does pageants now because I already knew about them and enjoyed them and thought it would be fun to do with her, but back when I was a little girl in the early 90s, I saw an ad for "miss american coed" in the back of one of those teenybopper magazines I was really too little to be looking at, and it said this pageant had age groups for as young as four years old..nowadays american coed goes as young as three years old but back then it was four years old...but anyway, I was entranced by the picture of the girls wearing ball gowns and tiaras, and I begged my mom to write for the info, she did, and they sent a big folder of info with a packet of stuff along with a VHS tape. It was a natural pageant, no makeup allowed. We went to it that summer, and it was a big state pageant with like a hundred other little girls and we were just competely unprepared and overwhelmed, because we knew nothing...everything we thought would look right ended up being all wrong and the pageant was just so BIG.
But, I enjoyed it and I wanted to do it again..and we found out about other pageants through doing this one, and learned how some are natural and some are glitz and how to do each kind.
Once we started glitz we never looked back lol. We learned more and more from the people we met and before long I had all the making of a glitz girl and was doing the glitz circuit through the Midwest and some in the south.

But I will say that nowadays most moms find out about pageants through the tv shows or through the internet. Gone are the days of word of mouth and random advertising. Lol.

As for your question about whether it's easier to start as a baby or older and do you need less...Well when you are a baby, you don't need the makeup, the falls, or the flippers, so that's a few less things to need, and you don't need to know how to model yet or do talent or know how to interview, so you won't spend on a coach for modeling, or a coach for interview, and you won't be taking dance lessons or whatever you're doing for talent.
But, many coaches work with parents of babies anyway so you might still be paying for that..it's more of consultation at that age- having the coach look at your outfits and photos and things like that, really consultation not coaching.
Once you're 2 or 3, you have to start coaching, so that begins more expense. By the time you're 4, you definitely need coaching because 4-6 is the age group where it really starts to matter that you know what you're doing onstage. It's not enough anymore to just be cute, starting at 4 you have to do stuff.

 

[ozazure]

Thanks for taking the time to answer pageantmom, it sounds like a similar trajectory in that there are people competing that aren't "competitive" yet but enjoy it all the same and decide to take on the trappings of the activity. I mean, had someone told me the kinds of things I'd be spending money on 4 years ago I may have NOPED out then and there.

 

[pageantmom]

Thanks for taking the time to answer pageantmom, it sounds like a similar trajectory in that there are people competing that aren't "competitive" yet but enjoy it all the same and decide to take on the trappings of the activity. I mean, had someone told me the kinds of things I'd be spending money on 4 years ago I may have NOPED out then and there.

That's how it gets started. A lot of glitz moms say "I always said I'd never do the fake hair," etc but a few years later the kids got flippers (fake teeth), spray tan etc. Because if you're going to do it, you gotta just do it, there's no point in doing something half way and then never winning.

 

[eileenhawkeye]

Here is a hypothetical: If an intruder was arrested for JonBenet's murder, and it turned out there was a pageant connection, and Patsy and John started this big campaign to ban pageants, would they succeed? I always see people asking why pageants exist after JonBenet's murder, but I think you need a lot more than negative publicity to ban something. You need people who have been directly impacted to speak to Congress, lobbyists, etc. The entire country might hate pageants, but is anyone taking the action and initiative to do something about them? That is why they are still here.