Unduk Ngadau: No Pain, No Gain.

Vying for Unduk Ngadau title can cost a lot

By Mariah Doksil.

Posted on May 28, 2011, Saturday (The Borneo Post)

KOTA KINABALU: No pain, no gain. That is true in a beauty pageant, including the Unduk Ngadau Kaamatan contest that involves having to use specific costume, hairdo and makeup.

The mother of one of the Unduk Ngadau finalists this year said the higher the level of competition, the higher the cost.

“If you want to win a beauty pageant, you’d better be prepared to spend a pretty penny and before you get to the pageant, there are clothes, hair and makeup costs that you should think of.

“In the Unduk Ngadau competition, the district level competition would only need a few hundred ringgit but once chosen to be in the state level competition, you are talking of thousands of ringgit,” said Emelty Sebastian who accompanied her daughter at the registration session of the annual beauty pageant at Le Meridien Hotel yesterday morning.

Without any expectation to win the state level competition, Emelty is trying to do the best for her daughter, Magdeline Evone Michael of Kunak.

She told The Borneo Post that even though she had to spend about RM700 only for the makeup and hairdo for the three events in the five-day Unduk Ngadau journey, there were many other things that they had to prepare right after her daughter was crowned as the Kunak Unduk Ngadau recently, including clothes, shoes, jewellery and others.

That will be the cost for a mother like Emelty.

As for the contestants, the pain will be the suffering from strict diets in order to stay slim and look nice.

According to the organiser during the briefing session yesterday, there were a few contestants the previous years who refused to eat during the whole competition to keep slim.

However, the organiser advised that contestants should eat and be healthy in order to compete in the final on May 31.

After the registration was done, one of the finalists cried and almost fainted because of gastric pain. The organiser gave her a packet of biscuit before they headed for lunch about 1pm.