VALDOSTA — Forget the TV reality show, “Toddlers and Tiaras:” Lowndes County has its own toddler with tiaras — 17, in fact.
Not quite yet 4, Masie Kinsey has won 17 beauty pageant titles. Representing Berrien County (because it doesn’t have a pageant), Masie beat out 37 other toddlers from all over the state, including Savannah and Atlanta, last June to capture the title of Teeny Miss Georgia Forestry Queen.
“I was aiming for Top 10, but she blew it away,” said her mama, Shalae Kinsey.
Masie’s most recent win was Teeny Miss Georgia Southern Sweetheart Queen on Jan. 16. Other current titles she holds are Tiny Miss Pretty in Pink, Tiny Miss Firecracker, Teeny Miss Azalea City, and Miss Valdosta Dream Doll Princess. The latter was “a natural pageant where they wear no make-up, just jeans and a T-shirt,” Shalae said.
Masie has also competed in two talent competitions and won both. Shalea said Masie was 2 when “she took the microphone from me and started singing, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ as she walked across the stage.”
“I was shy,” daddy Lee said. “(Masie’s) like her mama. That one doesn’t have a shy bone in her body.”
“She doesn’t even want me to walk with her in the pageants,” her mama added.
For Shalae, pageants are a special time of bonding for her and her daughter as they do make-up and hair and practice for pageants in their driveway or in the gym at Moulton-Branch Elementary School, where Shalae teaches second grade.
“I look on it as a fun time for us,” Masie’s mama said. “We do pageants and she and her daddy wrestle. She’s well-rounded, for sure.”
Masie enjoys “playing in the dirt,” her daddy said, as well as riding a four-wheeler and golf cart, fishing with her pink Princess fishing rod and hanging out with her 7-year-old twin cousins, Reid and Treyson, aka “Re-Re” and “Ace.” She and Reid even won the Moon Beam Pageant in Waycross when Masie was 18 months old.
Masie’s first pageant title, Baby Miss Pretty in Pink of Live Oak, Fla., was captured when she was only 7 months old.
“She would just smile and they loved her,” Shalae said.
Masie said “yes” when asked if she enjoyed being in pageants.
“I like to do something fun,” she said in an interview at her home Wednesday afternoon. “I like to get my hair done.”
In fact, when Masie’s 11-week-old sister, Mylee, was born in November and activity was eased off, Masie told her mom, “I want to do pageant.”
“She loves to dress up,” her dad said Wednesday. “By the end of the night, she’ll have on her Princess outfit.”
As for the cost of the dresses, Shalea said it “depends on what you want to spend. Her last dress was $600 and I got 90 percent back when I sold it.”
Masie gets financial support from both her family and her extended family, including her grandparents, Randy and Susie Hughes and Daryl and Beverly Kinsey.
“I’ve never called on anyone in my family who has turned me down,” Shalea said.
And when Masie gets on the phone with her extended family, they simply can’t resist the princess’s request for financial support in a pageant.
“Our family goes to every one she’s in,” Shalae said. “That’s why she does so good. Her face will light up when she sees them in the audience.”
Shalea says the costs of the pageants don’t concern her because proceeds go to charitable causes, such as Cystic Fibrosis, breast cancer and Georgia forestry.
“We do six or seven (pageants) a year,” she said. “I do the Florida ones because they are sweet, fun ones and because the money goes to a good cause.”
Masie is following in the footsteps of her mama who was in pageants because Shalae’s grandmother, Redith Wood, owned Kathryn’s Bridal and Formals at Castle Park Shopping Center and pageant dresses were readily available. Baby Mylee will one day keep the family tradition going.
Masie has never cried in the many pageants in which she has competed.
“We’d been done with it (if it happened),” Shalae said. “If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it. As long as we’re having fun, we will continue them.
“A lot of my friends do pageants in the Macon-Atlanta area, but we’re not that serious yet. I like the sweet, simple ones.”
Features
Toddler & Tiaras
Masie Kinsey’s bedroom is decorated with the many beauty pageant crowns and trophies she has won
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