I'm sure it will lead to greater things.

I look forward to seeing her on next year's Big Brother.

Sorry but my missus is the most beautiful woman in Essex. She has told me daily for the past 35 years of this jail sentence!

How many people were in this competition -one ??

Cityboy wrote:
<b> How many people were in this competition -one ??</b>

Chantelle wasn't eligible.

you have not seen my wife,she fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch

proberly not an essex girl proberly not a british girl.

paddyman wrote:
you have not seen my wife,she fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch

ahhh you dont mean the surely,:)

I would like to say well done to this years Miss Essex Winner, Stacey! It was fantastic to share this competition with her as i was in Miss Essex 2007 alongside her! Stacey is a warm and friendly girl who deserved the crown!
This years competition has to be the friendliest i have ever done and everyone looked amazing!

'god save the queen'

and John Prescott

i think she is a very pretty girl, well done stacy and good luck for the future x

Well done Stacey on your win and good luck in Miss England!

Lucie xx

I went to school with stacey at Eastwood High and o am not being nasty but its amazing hwat airbrushed pictures can do, if you go on her msn or myspace you will see the real stacey, she is a lovely person i wouldnt say she was the most beautiful person in essex

well i would say she is. i think she is a very pretty girl, and i dont think you should be telling people where she can be found, and i do think you are being nasty, i think when girls act like this it is just pure jealousy

Tine Basildon, i was not intending to be nasty and lets face it shes not a celebrity so it doesnt matter if i sed she is on myspace, All i ment was she has changed from the fun caring stacey who is now portrayed to be self obsessed with her looks, stacey and me where best of friends and she will kow exactly what i mean. Also i am not jealous as i no stacey and i am very proud of her i am just saying that the real stacey pictures can be found on her myspace! Please get your facts right tina before making falso accusations

i dont need to get my facts right on anything laura, that was how you came acroos in your post,if you read your post again you will see yourself how it sounded,and what has being a celebrity or not got to do with anything, :)

Tina- you said " I dont think you should be telling people where she can be found" I commented back that Stacey is not a celebrity so it doesnt matter if i say shes got myspace or msn,

no laura, you told me to get my facts straight, i was just telling you how your post made you sound and how you came across to me, i think she is a very pretty girl, you dont, end of discussion not argueing anymore :)

Tina- Get a life if you think that was an arguement then fair enough, but then again you are from Basildon so what can i expect! However if you READ my posts it clearly states that i didnt say she wasnt pretty!!!

erm i will have you know that i am origially from bromley kent, and also what is wrong with basildon? your getting insulting again, and young lady i am old enough to be youtr mother so dont tell me to get a life, i have a son of 25 and a daughter of 12 and they dont even talk like you do, ok im sorry as you didnt say she wasnt pretty but you did insult her a bit

Hello,

I would just like to comment that i was up against Stacey for Miss Essex and i am so pleased she won, she deserved this and i can tell you now, her pictures are not airbrushed as she looks exactly the same except i saw her without makeup and she is still stunning.

She deserves nice warm comments from admirers and well wishers.

Please can people only post nice things, as the saying goes, "if you cannot say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

From Louise at BASILDON (nothing wrong with me or this location)

Beauty Contestants Exploitation

For many years now the old fashioned style beauty contests, fondly remembered by many, with bathing beauties parading around a swimming pool in bikinis and high heels has long been a thing of the past. The PC brigade and womens' lib movement soon put an end to what they saw as the exploitation of women and the promotion of the female form as a sex object. In many ways this was a huge mistake as beauty contests went on almost unnoticed by the public and media, driven underground to take place in seedy nightclubs, hotels and the occasional village hall or community centre. In this country we only saw the occasional glimpse of a Miss World winner presenting an award, disgraced wannabe wags on mind numbing reality TV shows, or on a chat show if she just happened to be Chris de Burghs’ daughter. This has unfortunately left this so called industry very much to its’ own devices.

In the old days we thought of the exploitation of beauty queens in the simplest forms. Pretty but no brains, men ogling at their beauty and their curvaceous figures, and being used as marketing tools for whichever contest organiser/promoter they had chosen to enter.
Sadly today the exploitation is much more subtle and sinister and not only involves the girl herself but her family, friends, colleagues and possibly even the residents of the town/city where the girl happens to live.

It works like this - the national organiser will sell an area franchise to a local heat organiser. They in turn will pay a license fee to enable their winner to go through to the national final, usually in the region of £1000 - £2000. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately after the local heat organiser has paid their license fee they can pretty much run their heat as they see fit. They can charge whatever entrance fee to contestants they like. This is often dressed up in the form of finding a sponsor, i.e. a local business in the area that the possible contestant resides. Sadly that is often not the case, and if a girl is desperate enough to enter her family will usually pay the so called ‘sponsorship’ fee, anything from £50 - £1500. Once the sponsorship fee has been paid, then surprise surprise the entrant is then offered a fantastic FREE photo shoot of a lifetime. I am not going to say that the photographer doesn't do a good job; usually the photographer does a fabulous job, making what are very often quite plain girls with high aspirations into real beauties. But then it is in their interest to do so, as although the actual sitting is free, they will charge large sums for photographs/portfoli
os sold to the girls, and then pay commission to the local and national organisers. Sadly this scam is well known to work best with the girls who are not the best looking and stand less chance of actually being very successful in the modelling/contest circuit. They will nearly always buy the most pictures as they are not used to seeing themselves look so glamorous. Most of the real contenders already have large portfolios and often receive professional pictures free in exchange for the photographer to use the pictures for his/her own promotion.

Then the next big money earner, on both local and national levels, there is nearly always a text vote involved. The poor contestant is supposed to raise her profile in the local media, get as much support as possible so that she will get her supporters to vote her. Texts votes cost in the region of 60p-£1.00 per text, so it would have to be a very loyal town /city supporter to actually bother to vote. Again it is the poor old contestants family, friends and work/university colleagues who have to foot the bill, making it not a beauty, intelligence, or talent contest as the organisers would have you believe, but at best a local popularity contest, and at worst the girl with the wealthiest family wins. Many girls families run up huge bills in the hope that they will be able to fast track their daughter through to the next round of the contest, I was told of one girls mother running up a bill of over £500, in the sad delusion that if her daughter then won the text vote competition she would automatically get through to the national final. Sadly the organisers forgot to mention that the text vote (at this stage) only picks the final five. The organisers will still choose their favourite girl from that final five. If you challenge any of the organisers on this matter, they will always say the same sort of rubbish.

1/ All the girls knew that a text vote was part of the competition.

Not true. Most contestants would not be made aware of this until after they had paid their entry fee/sponsorship money which as a rule is non-refundable, so they don’t really have a lot of choice.

2/ If it’s good enough for X Factor, Big Brother, etc etc. Then it’s good enough for us.

All the organisers seem to selectively forget that programs such as these have massive national media coverage. Meaning that any demographic bias would be inconsequential. Where as their contests are lucky to get even local newspaper coverage, so the starting point is not quite the same.

Let us also remember, that although these text votes are not actually run by the organisers themselves, as with all competitions of this nature, as we have seen in many cases recently, this way of so called ‘public voting’ is open to abuse and rest assured as the vast majority of these organisers are in it purely for the money, they don’t have any reputation to up hold, they are not going to ask for an independent audit as that would cut into their profit.
If a girl is actually successful and wins a local heat, she will then more than likely have to go through all this again, only on a national level. If she didn’t fall for the photo shoot scam the first time, pressure will be put on her again as her current pictures won’t be good enough for the national program/website.

Another misdemeanour of this whole farce is that the organisers will always be involved with a charitable organisation of some kind. This is used purely to promote their contest and give it some credibility. Don’t get me wrong, usually the charity concerned does receive a donation from the contest, sometimes quite sizeable, so you can’t blame the charities for lending their good names to these types of contests. But all this money will have been raised by the contestants themselves, in their fight to become ‘Miss Charity’, and again be fast tracked into the final, as a rule no money will come from the actual organiser themselves, and some have in the past deliberately mislead the contestants and the general public into believing that the contest as a whole is being run solely in aid of their designated charity. I have only ever known this to be the case once.

The next big money earner for these organisers is the actual show final. Tickets for these events range greatly in price anything from £20 to £250, and even though there would be no show without them, certainly at national level, there are no complimentary or discounted tickets made available for the contestants’ family and friends. Once again they have to dig deep to support their daughter. When organisers are questioned about this, they blame the show overheads. Whilst it can be very costly to stage such an event, chances are for many items i.e. venue, sound and lighting, stage set, choreographer etc, some sort of sponsorship deal will have been done, in an attempt to ensure that they will actually pay for as little as possible.

Sadly on most occasions that a girl completes an entry form for one of these contests, she is often regarded as 'the goose that laid a golden egg'. A carrot will be dangled in front of her offering the possibility of success, fame and fortune, but she may have to jump through many expensive hoops, to get that end. In deed it is worth remembering that the vast majority of these contests, other than the prize package they advertise, have no modelling contracts or work set up for their winners, it is purely on the luck of what the actual winner is like as to whether she will make any money from winning.

It is unfortunate that we live in a ‘celebrity’ driven age, unprecedented amounts of people becoming famous for absolutely nothing, and it is sad that the likes of Paris Hilton, Abi Titmuss, and Jordan have become some of our young girls role models.
It is through the dream that such celebrities promote, that these types of contests seem to becoming increasingly popular. I am not going to say that they are all bad. In fairness to them they do promote a much healthier body image, than the worlds’ catwalks, Victoria Beckham and her ilk. I am also not opposed to any woman being able to use her natural assets to her advantage, and if it opens doors for her, then why not. But surely we do have to safeguard the young and impressionable from unscrupulous business men and women who are selling a dream. The sad fact is that for every girl who does make a success in this industry, thousands and thousands will have had a costly failure. To end here are a few tips on how not to be one of those failures.

1/ BE REALISTIC - If you want to take part for a bit of fun and the experience then fine. But if you are serious about trying to make this a career, then you or your poor old family have to be brutally honest.
Firstly, as we have seen with the ‘size zero’ debate, few beauty queens make it into high fashion modelling, rightly or wrongly they are just too large.
Secondly, whilst the organisers will tell you there are no height or weight restrictions, (remember they will say that as they want as many entrants as possible), the truth is few girls over a size 10-12, and under 5’8’’ will be successful.
Finally, take a long hard look at previous winners, and compare yourself to them. No one’s saying that they’re better than you; they just look a certain way and fit particular criteria, could you?

2/ DON’T PART WITH ANY MONEY UNTIL YOU KNOW ALL FACTS - There are still some organisers who are not after every last penny they can get out of you, so do your homework! Contact them directly and ask what format their contest takes.
Is there an entry fee and what do you get for that fee?
Is a text vote part of the competition at any stage?
If you are successful, will you have to find your own sponsor?
In all honesty if they are asking for any more than £50, say no thank you.
I would always advise NOT to take part in any text vote competition. If you really feel you must, then be aware it is a gamble, and like all gambles only lose what you can afford to lose, because lose will be the most likely outcome.

3/ PICTURES - You will at some stage need to invest in some decent pictures. So if you are offered a complimentary photo shoot by all means take it, but don’t feel pressured into buying the pictures, and only buy if you are really happy with them. Don’t believe that by buying the most pictures or buttering up the photographer will give you more of a chance in the competition, it won’t. Also don’t just use any local photographer without doing your research. Most will specialise in weddings, and will have little or no experience in fashion photography, so check their websites if they have one, or ask to see samples of their work.
It might be worth contacting a university or college in your area, to see if they have photography as part their syllabus. If they do they may sometimes require models for shoots, and you may get some innovative and artistic pictures for a fraction of the normal fees. As with everything - BE CAREFUL. This area of the industry is notorious for certain photographers to try and snare young girls into glamour work, or even ****, with the promise of fame and fortune as the bait. DO NOT do anything that you are not happy to do, and if possible always take a friend or relative with you to any shoot.

5/ COSTS - As with everything nowadays there will be legitimate costs involved. You will need outfits, make-up, hairdressing, and possibly pictures. If you get through to a national final, you will have a whole wardrobe structured around the show to find. So be prepared, and have a budget ready.

4/ MODELLING – As previously stated very few beauty queens make it into fashion modelling. If that is your dream, and you are the right shape, height and have the right look, you are far more likely to be discovered at somewhere like ‘The Clothes Show’ than at any beauty contest. Again do not sign up for any agency that asks you for a fee. If an agency really thinks you have what it takes, they will want you on their books and you will make money together. If in doubt contact the top agencies directly. Agencies like ’Storm’, are always looking for new talent and will give you a sometimes brutally honest assessment of your chances, but at least you will know the truth.

am somewhat appalled and bemused as to why Why on earth did the 'Daily Mail'think it appropriate to cover a story about the new Miss England being deaf in one ear.

The Miss England organisers knew that Georgia had this disability two years ago when she entered the competition before, and got into the top 12. That year Hamassa Kohistani won the title. At that time being the first muslim winner of Miss England almost caused a media frenzy, and gave the organisers the high profile they craved to promote their redundant competition. In many ways her reign backfired badly on them, as Hamssasa was notoriously difficult to work with, would not do many of the photo shoots requested of her, and used her faith to self promote and even make uninformed and potentially dangerous quotes to the press concerning our government.
Last year the title went to a typical 'English Rose', Eleanor Glynn, who was 'luckily' turned down by many top model agencies, again ensuring that the organisers got their publicity through the size zero debate.
It seems this year they have sunk to even greater depths, by using a girls disability to try and get themselves some media attention. I have no doubt that the mail covered the story in as someone on your comments board stated 'a triumph over adversity' angle to lift peoples spirits, and let's be honest we don't get many of those these days. But rest assured all the organisers would be interested in is the column inches, or interviews they can get through this poor girl.

How stupid are these people? To allow themsleves to be rediculed on their own website?
I had the misfortune to be at this event, it was hilarious!!! Although I don't believe it intended to be. Those poor girls looked so uncomfortable, it was Bollywood meets Sutton Coldfield, and neither side could save the other. Absolutely laughable, just a shame so many innocents were made to look so foolish in aid of the Miss England brigade making a fortune. For gods' sake stop this now. Let's not allow our beautiful youth to be taken advantage of.

i was miss Essex for 3 years and i can say it changed my life for the better i went on to have a successful modelling career i am now a mother of three