Sisters overcome bullying, qualify for Miss Georgia’s Outstanding Teen pageant

Yeah, they sometimes argue over bathroom time and whether the other can use their clothes or makeup, but these Columbus sisters have grown closer and made their single mother increasingly proud while overcoming the humiliation of being bullied. And they’ve done it by gaining confidence through pageants, winning local crowns and qualifying for the state competition.

So when 45 Miss Georgia’s Outstanding Teen 2017 contestants grace the Bill Heard Theatre stage next week in the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, two of them – Elise and Jillian Higgins – will repeat the mantra their mother, Paige Middleton, has instilled in them:

“You aren’t competing against your sister or anyone else; you are competing against your best self.”

Motivation

The Higgins sisters get a little competitive when they go on their 1-mile training runs around their neighborhood, but the aggression remains friendly.

“We push each other to do our best,” said Jillian, 14, a rising sophomore at Columbus High School, “… We’re not just sisters; we’re best friends also.”

“There’s no one I’d rather compete on stage with than my best friend and my sister,” said Elise, 17, a rising senior at Columbus High. “We’re there supporting each other, no matter what.”

Middleton never competed in pageants. She told her daughters, if they maintained good grades, she would support any healthy activity they chose.

Although she is the younger sister, Jillian started the family’s pageant life at age 7, motivated by watching pageants on TV and having friends who competed. Elise joined when she was 10.

Jillian has learned this competition “is way more than just a beauty pageant. We have a talent portion. We have lifestyle and fitness, which means we have to run, we have to keep ourselves in shape. And then we also have evening gown, on-stage question and a private interview with the judges, so you have to keep up on your current events. You have to know your platform and resume.”

The sisters are members of the competition cheer team at Columbus High and take classes at Prodigy Dance Centre. They dance during the talent portion of the pageants. For their platforms, Elise chose “Rally for a Cure: Childhood Cancer Awareness” and Jillian chose “Forget Me Not: Alzheimer’s Awareness.” Elise teaches dance to special-needs children at Prodigy, and Jillian volunteers at the Columbus office of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Both say their career goal is to work in pediatric medicine, Elise as a surgeon and Jillian as an oncologist. So the goal of competing in pageants goes beyond vying for a crown.

“We’re building friendships, we’re gaining scholarship money, and we’re finding our true selves,” Jillian said.

And as they seek their true selves, they have found the confidence to stand up to bullying.

Confidence

In sixth grade, Elise was teased, she said, for not being “that super skinny girl. I was a little, I guess, chubby growing up. So I’ve learned to be confident in who I am.”

Then a few years ago, she was at a parade with other pageant queens. She posted a selfie on Instagram, and somebody cropped the image and substituted a picture of a horse for her head.

“I was terrified about what it was going to do to her,” Middleton said. “She took it on her own, spun it, posted it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, with this big-ol’ thing about, ‘This is bullying. This is how you stand up to your bully.’”

Middleton investigated and found out the name of the boy who bullied Elise. After the boy apologized to Elise, she asked him, Middleton recalled, “What if it would have happened to somebody else, somebody who couldn’t handle this? They could have killed themselves or killed you. He swore he’d never do this again. … I was very proud of her.”

Elise learned, “Being able to go on stage and just be myself and go out there and just let everything go was one of the greatest experiences in the world.”

Although she has outgrown the problem now, Jillian had an eye twitch that was triggered by stress. The bullying from classmates was mainly through teasing, but about three years ago, Jillian received this Instagram message: “Kill yourself.”

“I let those people get to me,” Jillian said. “I didn’t think I could go out here in front of tons of people and just show who I really am. I was afraid they were going to judge me if I did one thing wrong, but I learned that I have to be who I am. … I’m not going to let the haters get to me.”

A girl cornered her in a restroom at school and dared her to fight.

“I’m not about that,” Jillian said. “Eventually, I stood up to them. … I reported them, and everything stopped, but it was a very tough time in my life.”

Pageants helped her persevere.

“As you’re talking in your interview, as you’re practicing interview questions and you have your personal platform, you get to really find your passion with your platform or dance or whatever it (your talent) is, and just being able to talk in front of people and talk about myself let all those emotions out,” Jillian said.

“... You get to really know yourself,” Jillian said. “You get to know that you can stand up in front of a crowd and you can talk to thousands of people, even though you didn’t think you could do that. You can do your biggest fear and dance in front of tons of people.”

Middleton also credits the Miss America Organization for helping her daughters build confidence to overcome the bullying they endured.

“I know when I was their ages, there’s no way I could have talked to a group of judges, gotten on stage and performed,” Middleton said.

Despite the glamour and prestige of qualifying for the state pageant, it’s not unusual for contestants to have been bullied at school, said Cassie Myers, the Miss Georgia Board of Trustees vice president for media.

“You would be surprised how many girls go through that and use the Miss America Organization as their outlet,” said Myers, who was Miss Columbus in 2011 and Miss Historic Southern Plains in 2012. “You find girls you have something in common with, who aren’t going to bully you, and you build off each other. It’s not a catty competition. It really goes to show how much emphasis we put on competing against yourself and not against anybody else.”

Qualifying

In August 2015, the Higgins sisters competed in the same pageant for the first time.

“I didn’t want them to do it together,” Middleton said. “I thought it would be too tough, if one beats the other. But they threw all that I said in my face, that you’re competing against your best self. Enjoy the moment. Do the best you can.”

It was Jillian’s debut in a preliminary competition, but she won the Miss Greater Atlanta’s Outstanding Teen title out of approximately 15 contestants while Elise didn’t place.

“There were some tears with Elise, not because Jillian won; she was just disappointed in herself,” Middleton said.

“I was kind of upset with myself because I hadn’t worked as hard as I could,” Elise said, “but I was ecstatic for my sister.”

Middleton recalled, “They were standing on the risers, and when they called Jillian’s name, you see Elise hugging Jillian so long Jillian’s like, ‘OK, you have to let go of me; I have to go get the crown.’”

In September 2016, Jillian was appointed Miss Middle West Georgia’s Outstanding Teen by the LaGrange-based Miss Hummingbird Festival board.

In February 2017, after not placing in any of the four preliminaries in which she competed the previous year, Elise snapped her slump by winning the crown as Miss Harris County’s Outstanding Teen among seven contestants.

“She was having trouble with herself, so when she finally won that on her own, she did it herself,” Jillian said. “Of course, we were there to help her, but she did it. She won, and so we were really excited for her. … We were sitting in the audience screaming.”

Middleton said, “You’d think we were at a football game.”

“I knew my hard work had paid off,” Elise said.

Middleton noted, “Every win, every loss, there’s a life lesson in there somewhere.”

Appreciation

This is the fifth year for Elise in the state pageant and the second for Jillian – and the last time they will compete in the teen division together. Neither has placed in the top 15.

“But, hopefully this year, that’ll change, because I’ve been working really hard,” Elise said. “Who knows? Maybe one of us will walk away with the crown. But just being able to be on stage and compete at the state pageant is, I’d say, a great accomplishment, because not everyone gets to do that.”

“Once you get to Miss Georgia, there are so many girls; it’s not like you’re really thinking, ‘Oh, I’m competing against my sister,” Jillian said. “… We have some of the same friends, and she may hang out with a difference group than I hang out with, but together we build a sisterhood, and so we go to Miss Georgia and have the time of our lives.”

As the days before the state pageant dwindled, Jillian admitted, “There’s going to be more pressure on us now that we’re getting closer, but we just have to keep a smile on our face.”

Their competition cheerleading team has 90-minute practice sessions at least two days per week. Leading up to pageants, they practice their talent for a couple hours two or three days per week.

“It’s something every day, pretty much,” said Middleton, a 1985 graduate of Hardaway High School and former paraprofessional at Lonnie Jackson Academy. She left that job in 2009 to take care of her father, Joe, who died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2012.

The sisters are grateful for their mother’s unwavering support while working nearly every day at her family-owned Ace Bonding Company.

“She’s always there for us,” Jillian said. If they have “a mental breakdown in talent practice,” Jillian continued, their mother tells them, “You can do this. You’ve just got to be yourself and have fun.”

Elise appreciates their mother taking time to devote to them and their activities.

“She’s just a great mom,” Elise said. “She does anything for us. She’s our biggest supporter.”

Watching her daughters on stage at the same time, Middleton said, “makes my heart smile. To see them doing something they love so much and to see them doing it together, that’s just amazing.”

Asked, if they finish first and second at the state pageant in their hometown, who would be first, Elise noted this is her last year to be eligible for the teen title, and said, “I will. That way, I can crown her next year.”

This story was originally published June 10, 2017 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Sisters overcome bullying, qualify for Miss Georgia’s Outstanding Teen pageant."