Like it or not, it's been pageants week here on 7NEWS. This week we've introduced you to contestants for just about every minor and major pageant scheduled for the coming weeks. And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, it does. Tonight you'll meet the contestants for the first ever Miss Big and Beautiful Pageant. No fat jokes here, these girls are large and loving it.
Kenecia Velasquez, Contestant
“I am big, bold, bodacious, proud, and beautiful.”
They are big, bold, beautiful and next week Kenecia Velasquez along with her plus size friends will do what few women their size have ever done.
Shomac Garbutt: I decided to enter this contest because
I want to be a role model to a lot of fat girls out there…I know I am big and beautiful and everybody should think that way.
Anieka Stanford: Everybody likes to look down on fat women so we will give them a show.
Charlotte Vasquez: Every year you kind of get bored seeing all these skinny people going up for pageants so it is about time the big people go up now so that is why.
KS: So you think you are big and beautiful?
Charlotte Vasquez: Of course I am.
KS: Why?
Charlotte Vasquez: How you mean why. I feel proud of myself. I feel proud of myself and looking this way. I don’t have any problem; bigger is better.
Kenecia Velasquez: I decided to enter the pageant as a challenge to encourage more plus size women to feel good about themselves, to
be more challenging to go out there. If you see something you want, go at it. Don’t give up because you have a big size or something like that. We can do anything we put our minds to do and I don’t think anything should stop us.
KS: You hate skinny women?
Kenecia Velasquez: No I don’t hate them. To me they are no competition because whatever they can do I can do better.
Trecia Morris: I just decided to enter the contest to let the world know that I am not a small person. I am big but I am beautiful at the same time too.
Anieka Stanford: A lot of Belizean women, we have a lot of plus size Belizean and a lot of them, sometimes you feel kind of left out in certain things so you should come out because we as big women we can do a lot of things that skinny women can do.
KS: Like what?
Anieka Stanford: Come to the show and you will find out.
And all this plump-girl pride is being put out there for a good cause. The contest is being held to raise for funds for the Jump Street Posse carnival band.
Marina Wellcome, Jump Street Carnival Band
“Right now with the GST tax and everything fundraising is really really hard so they came up with the idea. All I had to do was get the prizes and put the show together. Most of the girls are from my carnival bands, they grew up in the carnival band and it is a way for them to show me appreciation by doing the show and the money goes to the carnival costumes.”
Showtime is 7 pm on August 25th at the YWCA on St. Thomas Street. Tickets are ten dollars.
