There has never been a Miss America winner from New Hampshire. If Brooke Mills has anything to say about it, that could change soon.
“I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” Mills told us, “but Miss America is definitely a goal.”
Just 13, Mills has spent much of her life in the world of modeling and beauty pageants. Of course, when your mother is a former Miss New Hampshire herself, turning for the judges comes with the territory. Stephanie Mills was Miss New Hampshire as a teen in 1995; now she gets to cheer on her daughter as she reaches for the same tiara. Brooke was second runner-up in the Miss New Hampshire Outstanding Teen contest this year and she’s poised for another run next year. However, her next move might be even more exciting: She’s now officially a cover girl!
Brooke won the fourpoints Magazine Make Me A Cover Model contest; she heads to Detroit in June for a photoshoot, and she’ll be on the fourpoints cover later this year. fourpoints is the official magazine of the Miss America and Miss America Outstanding Teen competitions.
“So many of the people involved with Miss America read fourpoints, so it’s a good starting place,” said Brooke’s mother/coach. Stephanie did her part in getting Brooke on the fourpoints cover; beyond the good genes she passed on to Brooke, she voted early and often (as much as the contest’s “one vote per IP address per day” rules would allow) and pushed all her friends and family to do the same.
“It really took a community to get this cover,” said the elder Mills.
It’s not all photo shoots and tiaras for reigning Miss Bedford Outstanding Teen Brooke; the life of a pageant queen isn’t easy. There is a lot of practice and discipline involved. (As Stephanie put it, “You wouldn’t just assemble a bunch of kids on a football field and tell them to play – they need to practice first!) Indeed, Brooke told us that her life gets intense when there’s a pageant on the horizon.
“I try to keep a good head on my shoulders,” Brooke said, ‘but it does get pretty busy around pageant time.”
Along with the stress comes a lot of rejection. Brooke said she auditions for modeling jobs “all the time” and rarely gets called back. In the highly competitive world of modeling, failure is just another part of the day. But the always cheery Brooke doesn’t let that get her down.
“A rejection isn’t a reflection on yourself,” Brooke said, “it’s a reflection of what they were looking for.”
With that kind of attitude, it’s not hard to see why Brooke is a rising star in the pageant world – and her presence is being felt by the rest of the world, too! She took a trip to Bolivia last year to visit orphanages; she also works with children right here in Concord. Only a Rundlett eighth-grader herself, Brooke has been speaking to local classes to promote literacy for life. Brooke, who told us she had trouble reading when she was younger, helps set up reading marathons which raise money in conjunction with charitable organization HEIFER International. As if literacy wasn’t awesome enough, the money raised goes to buy farm animals for families in impoverished countries.
“In the last class,” Brooke said, “we raised enough money to buy a llama!”
Don’t think we’re putting Brooke up on a pedestal (although we wouldn’t put it past some future pageant director’s artistic vision). She’s still just a regular teenage girl at heart. When she’s not prepping for an upcoming pageant, you might catch her at Arnie’s enjoying some pulled pork or her signature PB&J sundae (a raspberry sorbet with peanut butter sauce that, in our opinion, should be named after Brooke – get on it, folks!). Or, she might be watching the old-school Addams Family TV show with her sister while putting off the inevitable cleaning of her room (believe it or not, a teenage girl who is also a beauty queen has tons of clothes).
She’ll also be keeping up on her schoolwork, and for good reason: Miss America and Miss America Outstanding Teen handed out $45 million worth of scholarships and money to pageant competitors last year, and Brooke hopes to earn some of that herself to help pay for college. The four points of the Miss America crown are scholarship, service, style and success; it seems as though Brooke has achieved each and every one of these at a precocious age. Now, her fate is up to the judges to decide; once she passes the Miss Bedford title to her successor on May 11, she’ll need to win another local competition to be entered into next year’s Miss Teen New Hampshire. Regardless of the outcome, Brooke Mills seems poised to take it in stride, aim high and reach for the top, no matter what it takes.
“It will all be worth it in the end,” she said.
