'Beauty pageant was like being on Big Brother'

Natalie Mageza took part in the Universal Woman 2025 contest in India

A beauty queen who competed at a pageant in India where she won an award for her charity work says the experience was "like Big Brother".

Natalie Mageza, from Stone, Staffordshire, spent two weeks in the city of Jaipur, taking part in various sessions and contests as Great Britain's representative in Universal Woman 2025.

It culminated with a ceremony on 10 August, during which Ms Mageza, who fled to the UK from Zimbabwe when she was a child, won the social projects category and came in the top 20 overall.

"I can only explain it as like Big Brother really," she told BBC Radio Stoke, recounting the experience.

"You're with 40 to 50 girls from different countries, you're living in the same space for two weeks, you're sharing rooms and you're with each other for nearly every single hour of the day."

She said it was interesting to be around so many different personalities with a lot of "culture clashes" and language barriers.

Natalie Mageza was crowned Universal Woman Great Britain earlier this year

Among the sessions during the contest was a discussion around 17 potential, sustainable goals for the United Nations, a debate she described as "intense".

"The whole experience has been so incredible," she added. "Regardless of language barriers, I've been able to have an amazing time and have incredible conversations with the most amazing girls."

She won her place in the international competition after being crowned Universal Woman Great Britain, at a pageant last year.

Her international award for social projects recognised her work for education and early childhood literacy charity Preface.

Ms Mageza said she struggled with education earlier in her life and wanted to use the pageants to highlight how important it was.

She said beauty pageants were still popular and attitudes towards them had changed over the past few years.

"I feel like as time has gone by, people are realising beauty pageants have come away from the old traditional standards of just having to be beautiful – a lot of women want to have an impact," she said.

Ms Mageza grew up in Zimbabwe but moved to England when she was 13 to escape violence under former president Robert Mugabe's regime.

She previously recalled how her family were tear-gassed in a church because her area "did not vote correctly".