OVER the next three months, teenage girls and young women across Swindon will dress up in evening gowns and parade in front of judges in the hope of winning beauty pageants.

Most competitors say it is a good way to boost personal confidence, meet new people, and raise money for charity. But the experience can cost some competitors, or their parents, hundreds of pounds.

And the pageant scene is big business, with a rising number of entrants and competitions.

As well as Miss Swindon and Miss Wiltshire, which are linked to Miss World, the other local pageants include Miss Galaxy Swindon and Miss Earth Wiltshire.

There are also a whole raft of teen competitions, including Miss Teen Great Britain, Miss Teen Fresh and Teen Queen UK.

Some competitions do ask for a fee to take part, but in Miss Wiltshire and Miss Swindon, the girls do not have to pay to enter, with finalists instead asked to raise £100 in business sponsorship.

For those who reach the finals, as well as the cost of the frock and shoes, hopefuls normally shell out for a hair and beauty makeover. And anyone who makes it to a regional final, has to pay for travel and accommodation.

Samantha Tapfumaneyi, 16, is through to the finals in June of Miss Teen Zimbabwe UK, a pageant for teenage girls living in the UK, who are either from Zimbabwe or whose parents are from the southern African nation.

Her mum, Patricia Mukuya, a nurse at the Great Western Hospital, has budgeted about £250 for the dress, but they expect the overall experience, which will entail a one-night stay in a hotel, to cost about £500.

However the Churchfields pupil says she will probably spend more and she has even commissioned BBC Young Apprentice finalist, Gbemi Okunlola, to make her dress in London at a cost of £250.

Samantha said: “I want to go all-out but my ‘bank’ next to me, she is the one always looking at my budget. I’m known as a diva so I have to go all-out. Even at prom, people are scared of what I’m wearing.”

And because Samantha is also in the finals of Miss Swindon and Miss Wiltshire on May 20, the pair went to London on Saturday to buy another dress, costing in the region of £150 to £200, for this competition.

Patricia said she would save money through buying the shoes and the attire for a swimsuit heat at local sales. She added: “I don’t think pageants are expensive because £500 for all that to me isn’t that much. If it was a birthday present, you would go and buy an X-Box which is like £300 but at the end of the day they aren’t getting anything out of the X-Box.

“If I’m spending my £500 on a pageant, I know she’s meeting new people, she’s going to grow, and who knows, she might even get a better idea of what she wants to do in the future.”

Hannah Golding, 22, the current Miss Swindon, who was Miss Swindon Galaxy and Miss Earth Wiltshire in 2010/11, said pageants can be as expensive as the competitors make them.

She said: “If they want a brand new dress for the final with shoes and hair, it could get up to £200 plus. And if you are competing in a lot of pageants, it could get expensive if you want a new dress every single time. But I have re-used my Miss Swindon dress twice – and that was £150 – but I can’t perhaps use that again. In the last two finals I got one on eBay and I borrowed one as well.”

Hannah said her most costly heat so far was the final of Miss Galaxy England, which cost about £500 because it included a £150 two-night stay in a hotel in Cheshire, and travel and food.

This year, she has also been invited to represent England at Miss Commonwealth, in London, in November, and to represent Great Britain at Miss America’s Supermiss, in the USA, in June.

Hannah, a council nursery nurse, who now lives in Royal Wootton Bassett, said: “It can be expensive, it’s what you make of it really. The fact is the judges aren’t looking for how expensive your dress is, they aren’t looking at how designer your shoes are.

“They’re looking at you, how you present yourself, they’re looking at how you wear the items rather than how the items wear you.”

Rhona Shafik, the Miss England heats organiser for Swindon and Wiltshire, said some girls save costs by swapping and renting dresses, but admitted the competition can be expensive.

She said: “It’s part of the pageant world that you may have to pay out money on maybe beauty treatments and probably a new dress, but it’s the same if you are into ballroom dancing. It can cost money. But it doesn’t help you to win, a really nice dress cannot help you to win, the amount you pay into a pageant doesn’t help you to win.”