I’m done with beauty pageants — Daniella

Through serial beauty pageant contestant, Daniella Akorfa Awuna, believes pageants are a great platform for one to help build a great society,she says she is done with them after failing to win all those she has participated in.

Daniella auditioned for Miss Ghana in 2015 but she wasn’t selected.

In 2016, she competed in Miss Tourism Ghana where she placed third.

Then this year, she represented Ghana at the Miss International pageant in Tokyo where she made it to the Top 15 and after that experience, she has had enough and is ready to let go.

“It is time to move on, I will not partake in any beauty pageant

Now I want to concentrate on my education and finish with a good class.

I am done with going for auditions to become a beauty queen.

Thankfully, I have gotten admission to go to a fashion school next year in Spain and that is what I am working towards,” she told Showbiz in a recent interview.

“I would have loved to feel the joy that comes with being a queen and the bragging rights it comes with but I think the judges for these pageants have what they’re looking for so sometimes you might think you deserve but someone else gets it and although it hurts life has to go on,” she added.

“For me, every queen is a queen.

As long as you were able to go through the process and get to a certain stage, you are a queen, you don’t really need the crown to feel that way.

And that is what I have told myself. It is not a do or die affair, if I did not get to win any of the ultimate titles, I am content with what I have so it is time to move on,” she further stated.

Over the weekend, news broke about three former Miss Ghana winners who claimed they had been exploited during their time in the pageant but Daniella says, she never experienced that.

“I have read and heard about it but I have not been through it,the thing is that these sexual demands from men in high places are everywhere, it is not only in beauty pageants, but then it is how you decide to carry yourself that matters,” she said.

Touching on how these events have helped shaped her, she said, “They have made me confident.Some doors have opened for me and I go to places where all I have
to do is just mention my name and that is it. It’s a good thing but hey I need to move on.”

Daniella also had a word for the ladies like her who love beauty pageants and want to be beauty queens by all means.

“It does not work like that at all, it is time and seasons so you just have to be patient. Being too anxious makes us vulnerable and people would want to take advantage of us.

If you try and it does not work just look elsewhere, for all you know, that is not your destiny. Let’s learn to respect ourselves - she said.