Miss Crop Over Tanya Hinds is not your typical beauty queen, not physically at least.
Standing at 4 ft 11 inches, she was the shortest contestant in the recently held pageant that she entered “on a whim”, but she stood tall at the end of the night, not only winning the title but the talent segment as well with a dance titled Fire.
It was the first pageant Hinds entered, she told EASY when she sat down for a chat. Her win was still sinking in and while she was smiling broadly she praised the other contestants for their camaraderie and thanked them for giving her tips, including how to walk on stage.
Why did she enter? Well the “house mouse” as she called herself needed to break the routine of work to school to home after she stopped dancing due to a knee injury.
“I said ‘Tanya you need to do this. You don’t have the confidence’ because I don’t like crowds staring at me. I did not like being in the spotlight since I stopped dancing five years ago after my knee injury. I stopped cheerleading, I stopped going out, everything.
“I felt as though my schedule became too busy and my reflexologist said do not do such and such for two years and it just became the regular lifestyle. So, after two years it became three and then four and then I said ‘I miss dancing so I’m going to enter this pageant. I’m going to gain some confidence so I can speak in front of a crowd, dance in front of a crowd’. I was accustomed to dancing in crowds so dancing alone felt like a lot of attention, it was a whole new experience,” said the passenger agent with Seawell Air Services.
The 22-year-old alumna of The St Michael School and Queen’s College where she studied French, accounts, and business in sixth form, showed no indication of nervousness while she was on stage being judged.
Yet, she said she was, and told EASY that her mother Yvette Hinds’ support and advice to keep going if she made a mistake as no one else would know stuck with her, and she got better through each round.
She laughed as she remembered the missteps she had in her dance routine, the fact that she was nervous in her swim wear and she had never walked in a floor length gown before and was worried about tripping up.
“This is why I have the most respect for Miss [Phillippa] Aimey [the organiser] because she said from the start ‘this is not a beauty pageant, it doesn’t have to do with size or height. You can do this’.”
It’s all behind Tanya now and she will be forever grateful to her mother who told her it was okay for her to enter the pageant and allowed her to practise and practise at her workplace and rearrange the furniture at their Farm Road Terrace, St Philip home. She also appreciates that aunt Sonia Grecia flew in from Queens, New York to join other relatives who attended the show and cheered her on.
Her best friend Mya Griffith was also rooting for her all the way from Britain and her friends Nakeiba Joseph and Ronet Johnson also supported her.
Their support helped “calm my nerves”, Tanya said, smiling.
Miss Crop Over, who represented Pic-O-De-Crop, said she has to thank her workmates and bosses at Seawell who supported her 100 per cent.
But who is Tanya? What does she like to do and what’s next for her?
“I’ve always been into languages; that’s why right now I’m learning Japanese and hopefully I can travel. I’m more interested in the Japanese culture and I have been that way from about third form around when I was 14. I am interested in cultures that contrast with ours.
“They have this thing called the Sakura festival where you go into a park when the trees are blossoming. They said it’s beautiful . . . . The food, how they focus more on seafood . . . .,” she said.
Her plan is to head to Japan where she hopes to teach English while learning Japanese for at least six months. She’s already done her research.
“I enjoy learning, once I’ve finished with their culture I would move to Italian, Dutch, German because I work at the [Grantley Adams International] Airport and these people come through on a regular basis. Many are so fascinated by us; they talk about how they love our country.
“You learn a lot [from them]. They talk about Brexit, they engage in conversation and you are so well informed. I enjoy my job. The different cultures that pass through on a daily basis is so fascinating and as long as your customer service is good they have no problem talking about how they love our seasoning and rotis and invite you to come try their scones, and English coffee and Earl Grey tea,” Tanya said, smiling at the memories
Tanya, who hopes to graduate from the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in October with her bachelor’s degree in management, loves to read novels by her favourite author James Patterson, cook and bake by trying different recipes, and just having fun.
“I love fusions. The Caribbean is a melting pot of cultures so you see some of everything in the Caribbean – music, food clothes.
“My dream goal is to become a wedding and events coordinator where I own my own business and incorporate the different cultures into the themes that the customers want. Whatever theme you want I should be able to have the background on the culture to integrate into your wedding,” she said. (GBM)
