Pepperdine students Brie Gabrielle, Kayla Brown and Daisy Schneider will take the stage at the seventh annual Miss Malibu pageant Sunday, in hopes of capturing the coveted title and advancing to Miss California. School of Law grad Sharon Haywood will also participate. Madison Hildebrand of “Million Dollar Listing” and Kristina Guerrero of “E! News” will host the event.
“I feel like anyone really can embody what it means to be Miss Malibu,” said Kristen Bradford, Pepperdine alumna, founder and executive producer of Miss Malibu. “But being a Pepperdine student, you’re local, you’re invested in the community. I think it gives you a leg up in that it’s easier to be involved in Malibu.”
Before creating the pageant in 2005, Bradford received both her bachelor’s degree in International Management and her master’s degree in International Relations from Pepperdine and worked as an event planner.
“I would love to get more girls involved from the Pepperdine community,” Bradford said. “It’s a really great opportunity to work on poise, self-confidence and interview skills. We also do a ton of fundraising in the community.”
This year the organization is supporting the Malibu Boys and Girls Club. Having already raised several thousand dollars for a youth and family foundation, they hope to maximize donations the day of the pageant.
In addition to helping raise money for the pageant’s own charity, the girls often pick their own platform for which to advocate.
For Gabrielle, who won Miss Teen Malibu at age 15 and has returned to pageantry to compete in Miss Malibu 2012, the Kind Campaign strikes close to home. Having faced harsh bullying in her teens, Gabrielle found that the Kind Campaign provided her with an outlet for fighting against girl-on-girl bullying.
“I want to bring [the organization] to the middle and high schools here in Malibu,” Gabrielle said.
In the case of Brown, a junior, networking is a big part of her participation in the pageant. Brown, a first-timer in the pageant world, thought it would be fun to try a new avenue for her broadcast journalism career.
“There are two benefits that caught my eye: the networking and the community service,” Brown said. “I’m already involved with the community tremendously, so when I found out about Miss Malibu’s involvement, I decided to do it.”
Schneider, a junior, said she joined the competition just for fun. Since she was completely new to the pageant world, Schneider was surprised to learn that the Miss Malibu contest was not just a new way to make friends.
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Schneider said. “I didn’t know there would be so much preparation involved. I sort of just thought you show up the day of the pageant.”
But Schneider says the effort has been worth it and encourages everyone to come to the show.
This year, the pageant includes both a Teen and a Miss category. Fifty ladies are in the competition, with 15 contestants in the Teen category and 35 competing in Miss. The pageant features an interview, a fitness and swimsuit competition and an evening gown competition. The final winner receives full entry fee paid to the Miss CA USA Pageant valued at $1,600, among other prizes. General admission tickets to the pageant at the Malibu Golf Course on Sunday start at $35 per person.
The pageant has received considerable attention since its founding in 2005, with an E! Network pilot in 2010 featuring a dramatized version of the contestants living in a beach house for eight weeks. The show did not get picked up.
