Every year, American parents spend hundreds of millions of dollars on beauty pageants. With over a quarter million young participants annually, entry fees, training fees, costume and promotional costs, and more pour into this industry. With the rising cost of entry and additional costs, some parents even take out loans for their children to participate.
The vast majority of beauty pageants are for-profit events. Their organizers make no attempt to hide this motivation, which makes it difficult to spot a beauty pageant scam because on the surface they look similar to legitimate beauty pageants.
Scam beauty pageants trick parents into paying high entry fees, with hidden fees to come. Hidden fees include extra costs for competitions within the pageant, like talent or personality contests. Training for the pageant can cost extra and is encouraged to boost participants’ chances of winning. Extra fees can be hidden within the fine print of participant contracts. This, again, is not unlike legitimate beauty pageants, except scam pageants tend to bury hidden fees deep within the fine print.
What sets scam pageants apart from legitimate pageants make themselves clear when organizers fail to fulfill promises. If the organizers are non-responsive, or meetings, events, and other publicized events never end up happening, you’re looking at a scam. Sometimes, the pageant will be cancelled with no way to get your money back. Sometimes, the pageant is a lure to draw young participants into the adult film industry, and into deeply exploitative situations.
If you or someone you know is looking into entering into a beauty pageant, there are legitimate pageants that follow through on their promises. Winners do receive the cash, scholarships, and opportunities promised to them, even if the cost of entry and participation is steep. Since it is hard to tell the difference between a legitimate pageant and a scam on face value, here are some steps you can take to dig deeper before any money changes hands or any binding contracts are signed.
– Run a Google search of the pageant and its organizers to verify reputations. Go to
www.pageant.com and run searches here too. This is a good place to start to get a sense of what and who you are dealing with.
– Take the time to read the fine print before signing any contracts. Additional fees and conditions hide deep within the fine print. One clause to look out for in particular is what happens if the pageant is cancelled. If you won’t get most or all of your money back, do not sign up.
– Ask pageant organizers for references. They should give you the contact information for past winners and their parents. If they don’t, this is a red flag. If they do, call past winners to see if promises made to them were fulfilled.
– Find out who will be judging the competition. If it is the organizers themselves, it’s a scam.
– If there is a date and location for the pageant, call the venue to make sure the event has really been booked.
As with all scams, the biggest red flag of them all is in the promised payout. If what participants and winners are promised sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
For a deeper look into the background of beauty pageant events and their organizers, contact me at
Mignolet@Bellsouth.net. Running a background check of organizers is essential to your child’s safety. If any organizers have been involved in exploitative or illegal activities in the past, you need to know so you can stay away and warn others.
