ADULT SEASON Baby Beauty Queens – Sophie

BBC Three · TV Week · 16 Aug 2010 · by: BBC

The fortunes of Britain's most lauded beauty queen, teenager Sophie, as she flies across the pond to take on the Americans at their own game, are followed in the fourth episode of Baby Beauty Queens.

Thirteen-year-old Sophie has won more beauty pageants than any other teenager in Britain. Having racked up 17 titles in the UK, Sophie wants a fresh challenge and so she's heading to Texas, home to the world's glitziest pageants, to compete in one of the largest of them all: the Universal Royalty National Pageant of America. How will she fare against young American girls who have been doing this for most of their lives?

Sophie hasn't always been obsessed with pageants. Until a year ago, she was a music scholar at a prestigious private school. Sophie's transformation from shy, studious schoolgirl to appearance-conscious beauty queen has been supported by her mum, Joy. Following Sophie and Joy on their ambitious adventure into the competitive and crazy world of American child beauty pageants, this film explores why, for Sophie, being a beauty queen is so important.

Part of BBC Three's Adult Season, Baby Beauty Queens explores the pressures on young people to grow up too quickly by shining a spotlight on life for aspiring pageant queens and child models in an image-obsessed Britain.