Two Bits: Of impressive young ladies and hot bods

Seven times I have had the honour of judging the Miss Ballito pageant.

You’d think that with experience comes wisdom, a level head and the insight to be able to pick the winners just like that. Well, it’s not so.

When the Rotary club of Zimbali started the pageant in 2011 they wanted the winner to be someone who is passionate about contributing positively to their community, reflecting the ideals of Rotary itself. They wanted Miss Ballito to be less about looks and more about heart.

Try as they might, it still had a strong element of beauty pageant about it.

This year I was totally blown away by the community project element of the contest. A week before the Miss Ballito crowning evening we judged the entrants on the community projects they had initiated.

They ranged from visiting the sick and elderly to refurbishing school classrooms to planting vegetable gardens to feed the poor. Some had received financial and resource support from their families, others had very little, but that did not limit their imaginations or desire to put the world to rights.

The much stronger emphasis on community projects started last year – unfortunately I missed the 2017 event – but my fellow long-time judge, Cheryl Peters, said this aspect stepped up another notch this year. So well done to Rotary organisers Heidie Smith and Karen Landman for that, because in my book it gives the pageant real meaning.

That said, when you’re presented with 10 young women on the catwalk, each dressed to kill and trying their hardest to impress, let’s just say it’s hard not to be human!

I’ve told the story before about the experience of judging alongside Penny Rey and Yvonne Hulett at the Umhlali Spring Queen contest way back when, of how finding a winner from a surging mass of pretty little girls whose parents were giving you the beady eye required you to be absolutely ruthless – as well as adding a touch of private humour for relief!

Well, that all went out of the window at the final evening this year – I found myself giving most of them the same marks! Fellow judge Karen de Charmoy isn’t fazed about the beauty element. Beauty, she told me, comes from inner strength and being comfortable with who you are.

I like that. In that sense this year’s winner, Milan Dhaniram, just shone with a serenity that I interpreted as supreme confidence in herself. Her community projects were outstanding.

I just loved runner-up Rochelle van Eck for her bouncy ‘never-say-die’ enthusiasm. Her presentation on the community project aspect ended with the challenge by Dr Seuss: ‘Why fit in when you were born to stand out?’ And then there were the distractions.

Emcee Erin Dickson told the crowd that fellow judge Natasja Barnard possessed the hottest bod in Ballito.

I knew that already, but I still had to check the bod out. Tash is a living advertisement for the benefits of a daily regimen of Pilates and clean living. So imagine me there, dear reader, beauty in front of me, beauty beside me and I was expected to concentrate. It was tough, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make for the community.

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I took my wife’s family out for biscuits and tea.

They weren’t very happy about having to donate blood though.