Southern girl here. I'm curious about this pageant title. There are scholarship pageants and there there beauty pageants. There are different types that lead to different paths, so to speak. Some are preliminaries that qualify the contestant to participate at a higher level which often involves sholarships along the way or only if you win the state title, such as in the case of the Miss America or Miss USA organizations. There are a few others like this. Then there are the "others" and those are really very often just a pay-to-play type thing. The title really doesn't go anywhere and there are usually no scholarships other than maybe a cash prize. The winner is often the contestant who raised the most money by selling ads in a program. On the surface it looks like the contestant is just selling ads to family, friends, local businesses to get their picture in the program book as many times as possible. In reality, the person who sells the most is awarded the title. I don't see these "organizations" in my community as much these days as I did 10-15 years ago, but when my girls were growing up we would see the least likely kids we knew crowned "queen" of our town when no one had even heard of the event. No idea where it was held and they were definitely not kids who were excelling at school or in the community. I don't mean to sound harsh, but I have a firm understanding of how the traditional pageant system works and these others are not the same even thought they put a lot of money into the crowns, sashes etc. These types are seen as scams by people who understand how the system works. Ever since I saw this story, I have wondered about what "system" her title was in.
