Miss Y contestants strut their stuff
It seems like only yesterday that the first Miss Y strutted across the stage and into the hearts of Belizeans. In fact, it was ten years ago…and as this year’s contestants make their final preparations for stardom, News 5’s Ann-Marie Williams checked them out.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
What started out as a fundraising effort in 1993 at the YWCA’s headquarters on St. Thomas Street in Belize City has grown. Ten years later and a venue ten times the size of where it started, the Miss Y pageant has become a Belizean staple.
Sonia Lenares, Gen. Secretary, YWCA
“We consider it one of our biggest events. We consider it a very prestigious event, a family event. We feel that it’s one of the few activities in Belize that provides wholesome activity for the entire family. At the YWCA we have done our best to make sure that we live up to that name.”
This year the names and photos of six contestants can be seen in show windows all over town. Eighty-two year old Violet Wills says she was encouraged to enter the pageant by several friends and is looking forward to the big night.
Violet Wills
“This year I joined the Y, so then I’m here and every time they see me, they keep riding Miss Bardalez. So I decide what the heck, go in, have fun, and do what I couldn’t do for all my young years. I’m doing village girl dance because I love the song from time into time. And with that I decide as I’m going to be a candidate in this pageant I would like to dance it, so that’s what I’ll do, dance “Village Girl.”
Shirley Bowen-Ferguson is no stranger to the Belize stage. This singer/songwriter has decided to perform one of her original songs “Not by Chance” in the talent segment of the competition.
Shirley Bowen-Ferguson
“I wrote “Not by Chance” because of the relationship that my mom and my dad had. They had a beautiful relationship, so I say it’s not by chance that my mommy and my daddy got together. So that song really moves me when I sing it because it was meant for my mom and my dad.”
Bowen-Ferguson says she’s not leaving anything to chance, as she’d like to be the next Miss y.
Shirley Bowen-Ferguson
“Very much prepared. I going to thrill the audience that night.”
Gertrude Grace Young, a seventy-year-old rural health nurse from Gales Point Village is excited about her first pageant.
Ann-Marie Williams
“”You think you’ll be able to win this pageant and be the tenth Miss Y?”
Gertrude Young
“Well I’m hoping so.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“How are you planning on entertaining the crowd?”
Gertrude Young
“I don’t have no idea right now, it all depends on that night what will happen. But I will be fighting for that crown.”
Young won’t be the only one fighting for that crown. Daphne Brooks, who has lived in Chicago for thirty-two years, moved back home three years ago and has her eyes on the title.
Daphne Brooks
“Sure, but if I don’t win that’s fine. If I don’t win, I’m just enjoying the whole thing. Just enjoying it; somewhere to go, different clothes to wear, some nice music to sing, meet interesting people and just enjoying the whole thing.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“Chance to get on the stage and show what you can do?
Daphne Brooks
“That’s right, and meet a lot of people. Because I haven’t had an experience to go on the stage and talk to a couple hundred or thousand people, according to how many will be there. And this is an experience for me.”
Maybel Shepherd
“I don’t know if I could win it. Maybe I come in second or third.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“Why not first? You don’t think you could come in first?”
Maybel Shepherd
“Maybe somebody there smarter than me.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“Is it smarter?”
Maybel Shepherd
“Somebody could do it better than me.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“But you’ll try your best?”
Maybel Shepherd
“Yes, I’ll try my best. All like to go down, I can’t go way down because ah…”
Ann-Marie Williams
“What you could do good?”
Maybel Shepherd
“Sing good.”
Singing good involves only one aspect of the event. Contestants will model casual wear and evening gowns. They will also offer opinions in a question and answer session…
Olive Bailey
“Give a speech from the Merchant of Venice, the speech that was given by Portia pleading for her husband who was to give a pound of flesh to the Jew.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“You like Shakespeare?
Olive Bailey
“Yes. And so I disguise myself so as not to make my husband know who I was and plead his case.”
Friday’s pageant will also feature an appearance by all the former Miss Y’s Antolina Davis won the title nine years ago. She was the first Miss Y.
Antolina Davis, Miss Y 1993
“A pageant like this is important because people, when they get up in years seem to think they should sit home and don’t do nothing. It has really simulated the ladies that are up in years as we call the seenagers.”
According to general secretary of the organisation Sonia Lenares, proceeds from the event will be used to further the work of the YWCA in Belize, which began in 1956.
Sonia Lenares
“For helping our early leavers programme, the very programme that targets young women that are out there. It will help us to provide the programme, whereby they can really come to the Y and acquire skills. Or even help them so that they can further their education in some secondary or tertiary level institution.”
The YWCA has established itself as a positive place for girls and women in ninety-nine different countries. Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
Tickets for the pageant can be bought at the YWCA’s office on St. Thomas Street and at the door. Reserve is twenty dollars, general ten and children five dollars. Showtime is seven p.m.
