Why Should You Donate? This is bigger than just a beauty pageant!

            Everyone noticed South Asian women making history in pageantry this year. First Nina Davaluri won Miss America. In my most recent pageant experience, the winner of Miss New Jersey USA 2014 was Emily Shah, an Indian-American from Edison, NJ.

            Clearly, the boundaries of what “beauty” is in the U.S. are changing. Despite all of these victories, pageants are still dominated by white faces, and some black faces. This is not that different from the rest of the media that we see every day.

            How many models have you seen of South Asian decent?

How many TV cab drivers have you seen that are of South Asian descent?

[Apu - http://simpsons.wikia.com/]

South Asians are often pigeon holed into very stereotypical roles, such as the cab driver on the popular TV show How I Met Your Mother and Apu, the convenience store owner from The Simpsons. Furthermore, up until a few years ago, there had never been a South Asian supermodel.

           South Asians are highly underrepresented in all of the entertainment industries, including modeling and pageantry. By supporting me, you will help to break boundaries for South Asian people in general. This will help for brown faces to not only be accepted into careers in entertainment more readily, but also to be accepted as beautiful in a mainstream sense. 

[Lakshmi Menon - http://www.independent.co.uk/]

            By supporting me, you will be assisting me in affording better photographers, pageant coaches and more flexibility in purchasing my wardrobe. Being able to afford the previously mentioned services and items will help me to reach higher levels of competition in my preparation for the pageant. If I am to place in next year’s Miss New York USA pageant in 2015, it will mean that South Asians are continuing to make strides in the U.S.

Whether we like it or not, money does make a difference in pageantry, and every penny raised will help!