Brittany Crosby '09 -- who on Thursday recited slam poetry in Derry, N.H., as part of the 2009 Miss New Hampshire competition -- says she is not a "typical pageant girl."
"I'm not a typical pageant girl in the sense that I haven't been doing this since I was three years old," Crosby said. "I was looking for a way to find scholarships to fund my time at Dartmouth, and I was like, 'Well, it's free; I have a gown, so why not?'"
On Thursday night, Crosby participated in the on-stage question and talent portions of the competition, and she will compete in the evening wear and swimsuit sections on Friday. If selected as one of the top 10 contestants, Crosby will repeat the process on Saturday, after which a winner will be announced.
While many girls become involved in pageants at a young age, Crosby said she only began competing two and a half years ago when she learned that the program offers scholarships to contestants.
To compete for the Miss New Hampshire title, contestants must first win a local competition. Crosby was crowned Miss Granite State in Pembroke, N.H., on Feb. 22, and also received a $750 award, according to the program's web site.
While Crosby said her friends have been very supportive of her efforts, other Dartmouth students have criticized the program for objectifying women. When Crosby chose to write about her pageant experience in a nonfiction creative writing class at Dartmouth, she said many students focused their criticism solely on the passage describing the swimsuit competition.
"While I know that a lot of the negative feedback about pageantry is due to the swimsuit competition, the objectification and whatnot, the main thing is, if you are to win the state title, being physically fit is really important," she said. "With a lifestyle like that, you need to be healthy."
Pageant judges do not use physical appearance as their only standard for choosing a winner, Crosby said.
"It's not like the judges are sitting there and saying, 'Oh, look, she's hot,'" Crosby said. "Usually, half the judges are women anyway."
In addition to the more traditional swimsuit and evening wear competitions, the Miss New Hampshire program requires contestants to select a platform. Crosby said she chose her platform -- "Be Unique, Be You: Promoting Healthy Self Esteem" -- after experiencing low self-esteem when she first came to Dartmouth.
"It was just hard to realize that I wasn't going to be perfect at everything I did," she said. "I saw that negative self-esteem affects people through adulthood."
While attending the pageant's numerous rehearsals, Crosby has juggled finishing her creative writing thesis, two laboratory science classes and her positions on the executive board of the Nathan Smith Pre-Health Society and as an undergraduate advisor in Morton Residential Hall.
"I do have two exams when I come back next week, but my professors have been really fantastic with helping me reschedule things," she said. "We do have a little bit of downtime [during the competition], and I'm going to bring my books with me everywhere."
Many contestants participate in the program while they are enrolled as students, according to Terry Landry, executive assistant to the Miss New Hampshire program.
"If one of the contestants feels that there's too much between school and the program, she will bow out," Landry said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "But overall, they seem to really organize their time and are able to meet all the expectations that we require."
Bryan Chong '09, one of Crosby's friends, said her participation in the pageants had not changed her from the person he met four years ago.
"She's still the same person who lived on my floor freshman year," Chong said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.
Crosby said that spending time with her fellow contestants has been a rewarding experience.
"From meeting the women in these programs, there are engineering majors, there are women that want to get their Ph.D.s," she said. "The commonality is that we just want to fund our education and give back to our communities."
