A woman from Bushey is raising awareness of mental health issues while competing to reach the final of a beauty competition.
Paige Ashton, who works as Sales Operations Advisor at a Technology company, is competing for the title of 'Miss Popularity' - the winner of which will get into the Miss England final.
While competing the 26-year-old is also raising money for the charity Beauty with a Purpose, which helps disadvantaged children worldwide and raises awareness about mental health and wellbeing.
For Paige, who is of Caribbean descent, it is important to her to see beauty pageants and the media showing fair representation of how multi-cultural England is.
She said: “The heat allows there to be further diversity within the competition and shows a better representation of England and I hope that many other girls and women of different ethnicities see this and believe they can enter too."
The Miss Popularity heat is taking place on May 22 in Leicester at the Miss England HQ, and is one of the last heats before the Miss England final on June 24.
Paige added: “I realised that mental health becomes a topic as we get older when actually we should be given the tools and understanding of it from a younger age.
“This has been my first try at entering a beauty pageant and it put to bed all the preconceptions I believed around it.
“It’s truly about women coming together to help others and support one another across pageantry.”
She has set up a fundraising page here.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here