By Madalyn Watson | Staff Writer
The sisters of Alpha Kappa Delta Phi Sorority, Inc. hosted its first Mr. Pink Pageant to raise funds for breast cancer research and education on Friday.
However, the calculations for how much money they raised during the pageant will not be completed until the end of the school year.
Four male contestants competed for the Mr. Pink title, sash and crown in the Paul L. Foster Success Center at 7 p.m. that evening.
After the three sections of the pageant, only one contestant, Houston junior Marion DuBose, achieved the title of Mr. Pink 2019 after playing a song on his electric violin for the talent portion of the pageant.
“I’ve heard about a male pageant before, but I hadn’t actually seen it in action, so I thought that was kind of interesting,” DuBose said.
DuBose heard about the pageant through his friend, one of the pageant chairs and new member educator for the , Chicago senior Elizabeth Keomanikhoth.
“We’ve been planning this since last year, just kind of throwing the logistics together, and kind of like what we wanted to do, and ideas we wanted to take from other chapters, and what spin we wanted to take on it,” Keomanikhoth said.
The all-male beauty pageant is a tradition among other chapters of the sorority, but this is Baylor’s chapter’s first year hosting the pageant.
The pageant consists of three portions: introduction, talent portion and Q&A.
“There’s going to be an introduction where the contestants basically explain a little bit about themselves — where they’re from, what they’re majoring in and aspirations in their life,” Keomanikhoth said.
During the introduction, the four contestants revealed their personalities to the judges by highlighting their organizations, interests and achievements.
The other three contestants competing to be the winner of the Mr. Pink pageant were: San Fransisco senior Charlie Pugeda, Houston junior Mark Lacanilao and Overland Park, Kansas freshman Daniel Dong.
“And then there’s a talent portion where they can showcase whatever talent that they may deem appropriate,” Keomanikhoth said.
During the talent portion, the contestants showed off their personalities even further through song, dance, music and yo-yo tricks.
DuBose performed his own rendition of the song “Secrets” by OneRepublic on his electric violin.
“I’ve been playing the regular violin since the seventh grade, so that’s about eight years now,” DuBose said.
However, DuBose taught himself electric violin his sophomore year of high school after watching someone play it on YouTube.
“I was interested in the whole talent portion as well as the presentation of going down a like runway and trying to show off to the crowd,” DuBose said.
After the talent section, the contestants picked random questions out of a basket that one of the members of the sorority passed around the stage.
“In the Q&A section, there’s a breast cancer awareness fact question, and then there’s a random pageant question,” Keomanikhoth said.
Plano senior Julia Huang, a pageant chair and the internal vice president of Alpha kappa Delta Phi, said that they want to make it very clear that the pageant is for breast cancer awareness.
“We give them the questions [ahead of time] so that they can study the breast cancer facts, so that they’ll know what’s going on and how impactful this is on women and even men,” Huang said.
Huang said that she joined the sorority because of her love of philanthropy and to honor her grandmother who passed away from breast cancer.
“I wanted to join kind of like a smaller, tight knit community of girls, I could really kind of share my passion is like my love of philanthropy for, so when I came across the sorority as a freshman, and I talked to a lot of the girls, they also have that same passion,” Huang said.
All of the proceeds made from the Mr. Pink pageant will go to breast cancer research and education.
After the the last portion, there were a few performances from members of the sorority while the judges made their decisions.
Other than the award for Mr. Pink, first and second runner-up sashes and awards were given to contestants Pugeda and Lacanilao.
The People’s Choice award, audience members voted on their phones for, that was given to Lacanilao. The Mr. Community award, which was given to whoever sold the most advertisement spaces in the pageant’s pamphlet, was awarded to Pugeda.
