Most girls’ incentive for entering a beauty pageant is tiaras and sashes, but for junior Hanna Hunt it was much more personal.
While most people assume entering a beauty pageant consists of putting on a dress, heels, and makeup, it is really much more than that. At the end of September, Hunt entered the Miss Teen State Pageant in Richmond. This pageant crowns a miss, a teen, and a preteen. Hunt entered the teen category and won.
To prepare for the competition, Hunt traveled to New York for headshots, wrote an essay, and the day before the competition, she had a “Miss America Pageant” type interview. After a huge amount of paper work and putting together a resume, Hunt had to choose a platform that would represent her goal in the competition.
“My platform was teenage depression, going into the pageant I hoped the title would make it easier for people to talk about it,” Hunt said of her choice of platform. “The platforms have to be something you relate to and I have depression, the reason I decided to start pageants this year is because of my platform.”
The pageant has multiple categories; fitness, talent, and evening gowns with crowning consisting of awards for interview, talent, and overall. Hunt sang for her talent portion of the competition and managed to win all three categories.
“Winning all three of them was weird because I’ve never done pageants before,” said Hunt. “This is my first time.”
Junior Connor Kianpour said, “I think that Hanna definatley deserves to be Ms. State Fair of Virginia. She is dedicated and beautiful and I couldn’t think of another person who would be better fitted for the role. I wish her luck in the later rounds of the competition.”
Junior Sarah Salem added, “I literally want her life. It’s so cool that she gets to go through the whole pageant process, and listening to her talking about it has been really interesting.”
The next step for Hunt is going to the Miss Virginia pageant in Roanoke this June. Miss Teen Virginia will have about fifty contestants from different counties in Virginia. The winner of the competition will go on to the Miss Teen America pageant. Until then, she plans on going to West Virginia to find a dress. She hopes that winning the competition will help bring notice to her platform of teen depression.