W
hen she was 5 years old, Selma’s mother entered her
in her first beauty contest, or what we would now
call a pageant. “My mother thought I was shy,” she reminisced. “I was in a bathing suit and I won.”
With the rise of beauty pageants and the very popular
TLC series Toddlers & Tiaras, these contests are not often
portrayed in a very flattering light. Instead, the minute
many hear the word “pageant” they immediately think
drama, toddlers in a tantrum and mothers who need a
reality check. When Selma Johnson first began her beauty
pageant days, it wasn’t just about being the prettiest. It was
much more than that.
“I had to walk the stage and then back and my mother
just told me to smile,” Johnson
said. “So that’s what I did.”
After her debut, Selma continued participating until she was
18 and credits many of the
skills that she has today to her
time in pageants.
“I enjoyed it. It wasn’t so
much a beauty pageant as it
was a learning experience,”
she said. “I learned a lot of life
skills. How to sit and walk.
How to communicate better
with business people. Getting
all that experience before I
was 18 was fabulous.”
She was also able to get
a few part-time jobs out of it.
She modeled in the window
of a store in downtown Fort
Worth every Saturday from
9-5. “I got paid five dollars for
the day and I got to pick out
an outfit,” she explained.
She was crowned Miss
Recreation of Fort Worth
when she was 14. “Winning
that one,” she said, “I was
the youngest when I won, so
that was probably the biggest
one for me.” When she was
in high school, she won Miss
Flame of River Oaks and then
went on to place 2nd in Miss
Flame of Fort Worth. Selma was also the runner-up in Miss
Auto of Fort Worth.
She modeled up until she was 20 after she had moved
to Colorado. “I did some modeling for Don Wallis,” she
said. “He was one of the judges of Miss Recreation and
he used me for a number of years in commercials and that
sort of thing.” As always though, life changes, and she
found herself questioning who people thought she really
was.
“Back in those days you didn’t know if people liked
you for who you were or for the pageants you won. There
was a lot of bullying and you didn’t really know if it was
bullying or not,” Johnson clarified. “So I decided to quit
modeling and quit the pageant world. I wanted to see if
people liked me for me or [because] my picture was in the
paper. And the pageant world had changed.”
To Selma, pageants were supposed to be about lifting
yourself up and learning life skills, but she found that as
she grew older things seemed to change. “We had a lot of
‘show moms’ and it got pretty crazy backstage,” she said.
“I didn’t like the bickering, bullying, the putting each other
down. That wasn’t what it was about. It changed. Now it
was more about you had to look a certain way, you had to
dress a certain way.” This type of behavior turned Selma
away from pageants for a little while. The “dog-eat-dog
world” that pageants had turned into was not how they
started out. But in the last four
years, Selma has returned and
taken the pageants by storm.
In 2012, she entered the
Miss Senior Parker County
Pageant at the age of 65. After
moving to Parker County from
Las Vegas, someone told her
that she was the only one silly
enough to enter after showing
her a picture of the previous
winner, Carmen Ashby, who
was in her 90s. “It made me
mad that they said that to me,”
Selma said with a laugh. “And
I thought, well, good for that
woman for entering.”
A clipping had been
placed on her desk indicating
that the pageant was for Meals
on Wheels, an organization
close to Selma’s heart because
of a relative that was on the
program. “I was into charities, so I called and found out
about it and decided to enter,”
she said. “I had no idea I was
going to go as far as I did. I
had no idea I was going to
win!”
Escorted by her grandson,
Selma attended the pageant
and was crowned Miss Senior
Parker County 2012. “My
grandson punched me in the back and said, ‘Nana, get up!
You won!’” she remembered. “I was about to get onto him
because he had been so good up until then… .” Since then
she has been asked to participate in a number of pageants.
She currently carries the title of National Honorary Today’s
American Woman Queen.
These pageants give Selma a platform to speak out
about something dear to her. “I want to encourage women,
that no matter how old you are or how young you are, you
can still be alive and participate in things like this,” she
said. “And besides, it’s good for my self-esteem whether I
win or lose.”
Selma is also Cowboyville Glamma for the Cowboyville
MAY 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
“Back in those days you
didn’t know if people liked
you for who you were or
for the pageants you won.
There was a lot of bullying
and you didn’t really know
if it was bullying or not. So
I decided to quit modeling
and quit the pageant world.
I wanted to see if people
liked me for me or [because]
my picture was in the paper.
And the pageant world had
changed.”
76