And she certainly never imagined forking out $2500 on airfares, hotels, make-up and cupcake dresses for this one contest.
Travelling to Melbourne for a national child beauty pageant is not something that the stage-averse Swift thought she would ever do. “It looked like she was ready to go on a drag queen show.” The make-up at the last pageant, she says, was ridiculous. It’s airbrush make-up, which has pleased Swift, because you can still see Indianna’s freckles. Earlier, a woman came by to do Indianna’s face. Swift, a childcare group leader from Queensland, knows all about wiglets, and many other things besides, since joining the world of child beauty pageants in January. “That’s a wiglet,” says her mother Melita Swift, 25, pointing to the cascading brown curls pinned to her daughter’s head. Indianna, relaxed and smiling, is still in her nightwear – a pink onesie – but her hair looks ready for the red carpet. Inside this room is a beautiful, freckle-nosed five-year-old named Indianna Swift.
