MOUNT VERNON – A Mount Vernon teen will be competing in the Miss Ohio Teen USA pageant this weekend, representing her hometown among 42 other young women.
Kirsten Hunter, a 2018 graduate of Mount Vernon High School, will head to Sharonville, OH (near Cincinnati) for two days of interviews, rehearsals and competition. Hunter, 18, is in her final year of eligibility in the competition, as participants must be older than 14 and younger than 19.
She will compete against contestants from across the state, although there will be candidates representing nearby Richland County, Lexington and Mansfield at the event as well.
“Mount Vernon’s small compared to a lot of the different places that people are coming from, and it’s just kind of cool that I get to represent this town and get to show, like, ‘Hey, we may be pretty small, but we’re pretty great,’” Hunter said.
Contestants will be judged on their performance during a series of activities throughout the weekend, beginning with a sit-down interview with two judge panels on Saturday morning. Judges can ask candidates “any question they want to ask me,” Hunter said.
“The interview is only done once, and that is one of your biggest, most important scores is the interview,” she added. “And that’s at the beginning of everything.”
That afternoon, contestants will go into rehearsals, where they will practice modeling the two outfits that they will wear for the judged competition – a fitness wear outfit and an evening gown.
“We have pattern that we go through when we go on-stage to model whatever we’re modeling, either for fitness or the evening, and we have two different routine kind of things that we go through when we do that,” Hunter said. “So we’re learning both of those and then we’re kind of going through how the show will go so it goes smoothly.”
On Saturday night, all contestants will compete in a preliminary competition. The final competition will occur on Sunday, which is when judges will announce the top 16 candidates, who will move on to the next round.
After another round of fitness wear and evening gown demonstrations, judges will narrow the field to five. Those five contestants will then be asked a question on-stage, and afterwards, judges will tally their scores and announce the winner. The victor advances to the Miss Teen USA competition.
There is also a new element to this year’s state competition – the ‘People’s Choice Award.’ The public can vote online for candidates, and the candidate with the most votes will automatically be granted a $500 scholarship and a spot in the field of 16 (voting ends at 9:30 p.m. Saturday).
Last year, Hunter did not qualify for the round of 16. While she hopes to make a run this year, she knows the competition will be stiff.
“I know it’s probably a cliche saying, but just to do my best,” Hunter said of her goals for the weekend. “I’m not necessarily saying I’m going in here and I’m going to win a title, because there’s only one title – only one girl out of all of us, and there’s about 40 of us who can win the title and go on.”
Hunter became interested in pageantry at a young age, when she won Little Miss Knox County at the 2007 Knox County Fair. Both she and her mother, Teresa, remember that day well.
“They always joke about the fact that she went to interview me and talk to me, and I took the microphone out of her hand and I didn’t stop talking,” Kirsten said, laughing.
“They had a list of questions that they wanted to ask,” Teresa added. “And I think they asked her two of her questions because she just elaborated so much on the first two that she was like, ‘OK, I think we’re done!’ Time was up.
“That’s where I think it kind of all started. She won that, the first pageant she had ever done.”
After that, Kirsten competed in various national competitions over the years, winning ‘Miss Spokesmodel of the USA’ at the age of 9 and ‘Teen Miss AmeriQueen’ at the age of 13, according to Teresa. A year later, she would win ‘Young Diamond International Miss’ at an international competition in Texas. This allowed her to meet friends from the UK, which she says she’s kept to this day.
Kirsten’s natural passion for pageantry is a curious one, as her mother did not compete during her youth, although she danced and competed on the drill team at Mount Vernon High School. What drew Kirsten to pageantry was the confidence it created – not only for the older girls she saw in competition, but also for herself.
“I just loved how confident the girls were on-stage,” said Kirsten, who recalls watching Miss USA and Miss Teen USA as a child. “And I just wanted to be able to say, hey, that’s something I want to be a part of – to be able to meet all the girls and go on stage and be confident in who I am, and show what I’m there for and promote what I’m there for.”
While Kirsten enjoys the modeling side of pageantry, her true passion lies in the community service aspect. She has taken pride in baking cookies for local homeless shelters, organizing bake sales and donating to those in need. Kirsten has also spoken to groups of troubled teens about body positivity, something she prioritizes in her pageantry platform.
“The things that she’s done over the year, either representing some of the other titles or just the school, just seeing the amount of love that she has for this community… I’m just speechless,” Teresa said. “And they say that that kind of stuff is learned, but it’s not always learned. It’s in the heart. She’s got the biggest heart of anybody that I know.”
Kirsten said the pageant industry has changed for the better since her youth, something that was spurred (almost ironically) by the TV show ‘Toddlers & Tiaras.’ In an effort to change the perception surrounding pageantry, industry leaders have started emphasizing a more “down-to-earth” approach, Kirsten said. When she started, it wasn’t always that way.
“It was kind of one of those things like, I was kind of awkward telling people about that because I know that people have such a stigma around it,” Kirsten said. “They immediately think of Toddlers & Tiaras, they think it’s a bunch of people who are very bratty or stuck-up that are just in it for the money or the sparkly crown.
“But I was in the systems that went away from that and wanted you to volunteer and get out in your community, and to really be a more down-to-earth, ‘yourself’ type of person.”
The Miss Ohio Teen USA competition, for example, has emphasized over the past few years that judges are not looking for the most expensive dress, spray tan or hairdo – they’re looking for the person who will best represent their hometown (and state) on the national stage.
“It’s not the dresses that are winning, it’s the person wearing the dress that’s winning,” Teresa said.
“People think, I have to get the prettiest dress or the most expensive dress or I’m going to fall behind,” Kirsten added. “But it really isn’t that kind of a thing.”
This attitude coincides with the Kirsten’s “platform,” which judges will ask about during the interview process. It encapsulates what each candidate would promote if they were to win. For Kirsten, it’s body positivity.
“My hope is to maybe one day start a group (where) we can go around and talk to (people) in different groups about being confident and what it means to be OK with who you are, and being confident in your own skin, because that’s something that I dealt with for a long time,” Kirsten said.
“It’s something I’m really passionate about, and that’s why I want to show other girls and even guys, just to be confident and to be able to say, ‘Hey, I am who I am and I’m happy about it.’”
While Kirsten would like to continue to participate in pageantry after this year’s competition, she also has other goals to pursue. She’s currently a freshman at Columbus State Community College, studying veterinary technology, a field she grew passionate about when she interned at Mount Vernon Animal Hospital during her junior year of high school.
Kirsten won’t be alone this weekend when it comes to post-pageantry aspirations – within the field of 43 participants, there will be girls interested in business, modeling and law, Teresa said.
For Kirsten, this weekend in Sharonville represents the culmination of a childhood of community service and national pageantry, her last time competing in a teen pageant. She’s looking forward to using the life lessons she’s learned over the years to inspire those who are just now finding themselves.
“I can honestly tell you how much confidence it gives you and how much self-esteem it boosts,” Kirsten said of pageantry. “You just start to understand who you are as a person and what you want to speak about, what you want to be, what-are-you-for type of thing. So I just want to show girls that they can do that too, anyone can.”
