By Dean Poling
LaKisha Brooks may live in Atlanta, but she understands going from a small town to the big city. That understanding is part of what landed her a spot on MTV’s “Made.”
Brooks’ episode is scheduled to broadcast this weekend.
The 2002 Lowndes High School graduate grew up in the Clyattville-Lake Park area. The daughter of George and Jeanette Brooks, LaKisha left the region shortly after high school graduation. She attended Georgia State and has lived in Atlanta ever since.
She works as a freelance journalist, but it is her work as a beauty pageant organizer/coach that attracted the MTV producers’ attention. They cast her as a coach on the popular self-improvement show which follows teens who wish to be made into an athlete, dancer, pageant queen, etc. MTV paired Brooks with a 15-year-old from the small town of Madison, Ga.
The girl wished to become a pageant contestant. As a coach, Brooks had her work cut out for her.
The young teen was the only girl in a house full of boys, Brooks said in a phone interview with The Valdosta Daily Times. The teen had been raised a tomboy. The teen was uncertain of herself. And, though she wanted to be a pageant contestant, the teen knew nothing about pageants. She had never even seen a beauty pageant.
“She wanted more confidence,” Brooks, 25, says of the teenager. “My job was not just to make her a pageant queen but someone who loves herself.”
Starting in early October, Brooks commuted from Atlanta to Madison nearly every day for a month. She did not live with the teen but spent hours with her daily. She worked with the teen’s hair, nails, makeup, dress, poise, diction. The sessions were intense.
“We had a lot of struggles during the show,” Brooks says. “We broke down in tears.”
Brooks says she and the teen aren’t close friends after the experience but have developed an amicable relationship.
Intense or not, Brooks would work with “Made” again. “I helped someone become a pageant queen,” Brooks says. “... I helped a young lady set goals for herself.”
MTV’s “Made” is scheduled to run 4 p.m. Saturday.
