Baby Barbie: Nine-Year-Old Gets Dolled Up For Beauty Pageants

But Barbie isn’t old enough for nightclubs - in fact she is still in primary school.

The nine-year-old gets dolled up once a month for beauty pageant competitions, and no embellishment is spared on the pretty school girl.

Mum, Samantha Pavey, 29, spends up to £350 month turning her daughter into a pageant princess – and even pays for false nails and spray tans to ensure the perfect look.

The stay at home mum-of-three loves sparkles and the colour pink – and began entering Barbie in pageants at just seven-years-old.

Samantha, from Peterborough, Cambridge, said: “On a pageant day she wears more makeup than me when I go on a night out.

“She always has false nails, we use stick on ones so we can get them off in time for school.

“We do her hair – I cut, curl and style wigs so she can wear it up – or we put extensions in for the pageant so she can wear it down in curls or with large flicks at the bottom.

“We put on fake eyelashes rather than mascara so she doesn’t have left-over makeover everywhere for school.

“She’s full glitz - eyelashes, nails, hair extensions.”

Wearing foundation, bronzer, blusher, lipstick, eye shadow, and with her eyebrows darkened – pageant days see the young schoolgirl transform into a glitzy pageant queen.

“Sometimes she gets spray tans, sometimes I do it myself - depending on what I can afford,” Samantha said.

“We don’t go to a pageant without tan on – it’s not worth doing.

“She loves it and I love it – we’re completely hooked now.”

With Barbie demanding new and ever-more bejewelled outfits, the mother-daughter hobby is racking up a hefty price-tag.

But Barbie loves every moment she gets to spend in the spotlight.

Barbie said: “I love being on stage, I love having new outfits and dresses.

“I love getting new crowns.”

Barbie has 20 hairpieces so she can transform herself for each pageant and embrace ever-more glamorous looks.

And the mother-daughter team have been to over 30 pageants in the past two years.

Samantha said: “It’s around £150 for an outfit, £40 on music, £70 to enter and then there's the nails, the hairpieces, travel, the list goes on and on.

“It’s the beauty dresses which cost more – they can cost up to £300.

“We probably go about once a month now, but at one point it was once a week.”

And becoming the perfect pageant princess is a time-consuming process.

Samantha, a hairdresser, said: “We do the nails and the tan the night before. Then on pageant day it takes two hours to do the hair and makeup.

“She loves being made up, she likes to do bits of makeup herself and tells me how to do it.”

But Samantha insists the tan and makeup is just for the stage – and the rest of the time Barbie is a bare-faced school-girl.

She said: “The tan looks good on stage, with the 'glitz pageants' the tan and the makeup come into the points that the girls score on their overall appearance.

“It’s all about creating the whole package.

“We only wear makeup for pageants and then we wash it all off, she doesn’t even wear makeup for parties.

“I prefer how she looks naturally, but on the stage she looks better done up.”

Despite having two younger sons, Michael, eight, and Mantana, four, Samantha still finds time to cut Barbie's wigs and add sparkles to her outfits.

“Barbie's getting a bit older now so she helps choose the outfits,” she said.

“She loves the beauty dresses because she likes bright colours and diamonds.

“She said her next beauty dress needs to be smothered in diamonds – she doesn’t want to see any fabric.”

Barbie and Samantha have travelled all over the country to attend Britain’s biggest and best beauty pageants.

A pageant day involves a hectic whirl of costume changes, with Barbie being made and re-made in different outfits and styles.

Samantha said: “She normally wears three different outfits during the day, there’s hair changes, sometimes the makeup needs changes to match the outfits.

“She does get quite stressed sometimes from the rush of it, but she knows its got to be done, she just loves doing them.”

And Samantha and Barbie’s friends and family fully support her glitzy pastime.

“I don’t get criticised by my friends and family, they’re all proud of Barbie and they love what she does,” said Samantha.

“Pageants don’t sexualize children. It doesn’t matter what a child is wearing, it’s just clothes.

“She only wears the outfits to go the stage, the makeup and nails come straight off afterwards, it’s just for the stage.

“I’d like her to carry on with them, it’s a hobby and keeps her out of trouble.”

And far from being a pushy parent, Samantha claims that it is Barbie who’s constantly begging her mum for the next pageant and a new dress.

Samantha said: “She’s the pushy one, not me.

“She nags me, ‘I want to do this pageant’, ‘I want to wear this’.

“She chooses her own look and outfits, I’d never put her in anything she didn’t feel comfortable in.

“Sometimes she gets nervous about going on stage, but I just tell her she looks amazing and that she looks gorgeous and that she doesn’t need to worry.”