The night before the then Hayley Barber won Miss Alabama after five years of vying unsuccessfully for the crown, she had a dream that a crown was being placed on her head.
She had come close to winning the title before – impressively, she had placed in the Top 10 every year she had competed – but the closest she had ever come to winning was second runner-up. She had gotten woefully used to being told no. In the craziness of Miss Alabama pageant week, and especially the absolute madness of the finale day, Hayley had forgotten about the dream until she was standing onstage as one of the Top 5 contestants that night. She didn’t expect at all that her name would be called – after all, this was her fifthtime on the Miss Alabama stage, so she was used to another deserving woman winning – but then she remembered the dream.
“It was God preparing me for what would happen,” Hayley said.
As Hayley will tell you, she was not used to being called out first for anything. She was very happy and very used to playing the supporting role, the second-place finisher, as others had their moment in the spotlight. But, as the Top 5 names dwindled down to two and it was down to just Hayley – competing as Miss Shelby County that year – and the then Miss Hoover Callie Walker, that dream kept ruminating in her mind.
And then, finally, after so many years of dedicating her entire life to pageants, the unseen but endless hours of preparation for mere moments on stage where five complete strangers determine the course and trajectory of the next year of your life, it was her name, not someone else’s, that she heard announced as Miss Alabama 2016. The look on her face says it all: Shock. Disbelief. The end of her five years of competition, but the beginning of an entirely different journey – a journey of becoming one of the most recognizable faces in Alabama, a welcoming into the fold of the Miss Alabama family. The moment she’d waited so long for was here.
Literally and figuratively, her dream came true. She was Miss Alabama.
But it didn’t come easy.
***
Let’s get something clear right off the bat – Hayley Barber did not grow up dreaming of becoming Miss Alabama. Later on, after she started competing, it became something she wanted and strove for and felt she could do a fantastic job at. But Hayley was a tomboy, and shy, and the pageant stratosphere was not her scene.
Hayley grew up all over the Southeast, living in five states before she was 10 years old. Her father, a pastor, would start churches in different locales and then move on and start another church somewhere else. The Barbers landed in Birmingham, Ala., when Hayley started middle school, and she graduated from Pelham High School.
Hayley’s father had a cousin that was from Sylacauga, Ala., where pageants reign supreme. This cousin competed in Miss Alabama and made Top 10 consistently, and Hayley’s dad was awed by the fact that his cousin, because of her experience in Miss Alabama, got to go all over and perform her talent at different places. He encouraged Hayley to consider pageants, but she was patently not interested. To pacify her father, she competed in her middle school beauty walk, but that was about the extent of it. Time went on, and during her junior year of high school, Hayley started thinking about how she was going to afford college. Her parents were able to afford to send her to a community college, but the four-year university she wanted to attend would have been out of reach. At that time, Hayley had dreams of becoming an optometrist and knew that to set herself up for her best chances at optometry school, she needed to attend a four-year university, and preferably one with a strong science, healthcare, and research reputation like the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). So, in her junior year, with it becoming clear that Hayley would be sending herself through four years of college and then four more years of optometry school, she was at an event where, serendipitously, the then Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen was performing her talent. (The Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen pageant is a feeder into the Miss America’s Outstanding Teen pageant, which is the teenage arm of the Miss America pageant; only when you are 17 are you eligible to begin competing in Miss America preliminaries, and in the Outstanding Teen pageant, you can compete from ages 13 to 17. Many former Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen winners go on to become Miss Alabama.) Before the Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen hit the stage, the announcer said that her entire undergraduate degree had been paid for at the University of Alabama because of pageants.
It all clicked. This – pageants – this was the way forward, the way that Hayley would be able to send herself through school and be debt free in the process.
“I said to myself ‘I think I should try that for at least one year to see if I can get some scholarship money,’” Hayley said. “I’d been doing tap, jazz, ballet, and all types of dance since I was four, so I knew performing on stage wasn’t an issue.”
She competed in Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen the last year she was eligible to do so and, in her first year competing, was second runner-up. She was able to make enough money for her first year of college at UAB. It was never really the crown she was after – at least in the beginning – but in competing in pageants that year and for years after, it was paying for school that drove her to compete.
“Paying for my first year of college inspired me to just keep going and every year get enough scholarship money to pay for my next year of schooling,” Hayley said. “It ended up working out perfectly that I didn’t win [Miss Alabama] too early, because I’d get just enough money for the next year of school and it ended up being a blessing. I ended up paying for all of my schooling, which was my ultimate goal throughout the whole thing.”
In her first year of competing in Miss America preliminaries, Hayley said it took her 13 preliminaries to finally win. That first year Hayley served as Miss Tennessee Valley and went on to make Top 10 at Miss Alabama. She came back in her second year of competing as Miss Jefferson County, and at Miss Alabama her second year, she placed fourth runner-up, cracking the Top 5 for the first time.
Her first year of competing, Hayley said, she just wanted to have a good time. Her second year, the year she broke into the Top 5 for the first time, she was a freshman in college at UAB and experiencing all of the newness that brings – and not totally focused on Miss Alabama and performing exceptionally well at it.
“I was definitely not ready to be Miss Alabama by any means,” she said.
But then, her third year competing – this time as Miss Phenix City – she threw herself into preparation for Miss Alabama, heart and soul. The girl who said she didn’t ever aspire to be Miss Alabama? Well, she wanted to be Miss Alabama now. Desperately. Hayley became extremely close to her director – the person who is in charge of a local preliminary pageant like Miss Phenix City – and spent every moment of time she had not in class working out to get ready for the swimsuit competition, memorizing current events in hopes of nailing her interview, practicing her tap dance routine in order to wow the judges on stage at the main event. It became her life – all-consuming.
“Pageants are not just an extracurricular activity in college that other people might do,” Hayley said. “If someone were on an athletic team in college, they’d spend all day every day focusing on one thing – focusing on classes, too, but their world is whatever athletic team they’re on. That’s kind of how I was. By now I’d been in that routine for three years. I was so used to working two days a week on school and then three days a week doing appearances at elementary schools, working on my platform, or in some way raising money for Children’s Miracle Network [the chosen philanthropic organization of Miss America]. I had it down pat. I was so busy all the time, and was in a routine of working really hard.”
Then, the letdown.
***
It was her third Miss Alabama appearance now, in 2014. Hayley, 20, had made the Top 5 the previous year without even really giving Miss Alabama preparation 100 percent. This time, she was prepared – to the point of sacrificing parts of her life for the pageant.
“I spent so much time on it that I was missing out on my college experience,” Hayley said. “I never did a sorority. I never got involved in any clubs, other than the Pre-Optometry Club – nothing that really gave me that college experience.”
She was so prepared it was almost as if she overdid it. That night, she did make Top 10, but failed to crack the Top 5, let alone get close to the title or win it. She felt as though she let everyone down. Her Miss Phenix City director. Her family. Those who had cheered her on for the past three years. But, most devastatingly, herself.
“I learned something different every year, but the third time I tried really hard and I thought I’d win, and I ended up trying toohard and not really fully being myself,” she said. “That was the only time I was extremely disappointed [in not winning the crown]. I really spent that year soul searching who I was as a person. After my freshman year of college, I was not happy with who I was as a person, and I needed to figure out who I was. I had grown up in a strict household, so when my freshman year hit, I thought, ‘Oh, freedom!’ But my sophomore year, I wanted to figure out who I was. I wanted to like that person. I wanted to be kind to people. My director was the most encouraging person and really pushed me with the pageant and ended up helping me become who I am now as a person. I worked so hard and had put so much effort in all year, and I was super disappointed in the results. But now I know I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t comfortable with who I was. I was confident, but not comfortable – and there is a difference there. I wanted it too much, and I didn’t fully grasp what the job was about and I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t doing the work for the pageant because it was making me a better person – I was doing the work for the pageant because it would help me win the pageant.”
It was this year – the year that gutted her – that Hayley learned one of the key lessons about competing in pageants: Being told no, being rejected, and being let down are feelings you have to make friends with, because it will happen. Often.
“You hear no a lot more than you hear yes,” she said. “It’s five people’s opinion. In one pageant they might crown one person, and then crown another person on a totally different day with the same five people. A lot of time it just depends on the day, and you can’t put your self-worth in that.”
After feeling so let down, Hayley sat down with her mom, who she describes as the most even-keeled person on the planet.
“She is never super excited or super sad about anything,” Hayley said. “She’s always great to give advice – sound advice.”
Hayley and her mom discussed the big elephant in the room: Are pageants worth it?
“I look back now and I know I’m so thankful I did it, but it’s tough to get back up and get going,” she said. “I don’t know what it was, but my body kicked and I just wanted to keep working. When you’re enrolling in classes again and see a bill for $10,000 for the semester, my first instinct was ‘Let me get back in pageants so I can pay off my books.’ It was so in my routine.”
With that tuition bill driving her – and, yes, now the hope to one day be Miss Alabama, too – Hayley secured a spot in her fourth year competing for Miss Alabama when she won Miss Talladega County. Hayley broke back into the Top 5, her new mindset propelling her closer to the Miss Alabama crown than she had ever been – second runner-up.
Her dream was getting closer and closer to coming true.
***
Not many compete in Miss Alabama five consecutive times. Either they age out (a term for exceeding the maximum age of competition, which is 25), they win, they get married, life distracts them in another way, or they quit. But here Hayley was in 2016, 22 years old now, and competing for the fifth time, this time as Miss Shelby County.
The week of competition had gone well, and she had made the Top 5 again. But as the runners-up kept getting called and each time she was not one of them, she remembered that dream. And then, that moment – the moment her name was called as Miss Alabama 2016. A moment that Hayley had hoped for, worked for, sacrificed for. The look on her face says it all.
“I don’t think I was thinking,” she said. “I think I went blank. I don’t think I was mentally aware. I think I was just scared. Like I said, I’d never won anything before, and I didn’t know what the next few weeks would be like. I was scared and didn’t know what to expect. I don’t like to be the center of attention, and so, because I’d never won anything before, I didn’t like that feeling.”
The night of her crowning, the new Miss Alabama stays in a hotel and wears whatever clothes she’d brought to the week of Miss Alabama competition for her next several appearances, all part of a several-day public relations run introducing the new titleholder to the media. It is baptism by fire – literally the moment your name is called and you become the new Miss Alabama, the job completely overtakes your life and doesn’t relent for the next year. But, with the self-confidence she’d gained over her five years competing, even though she was scared, Hayley knew she was up for the job and anything it threw at her.
“I knew I could do the job and do it really well,” she said. “I was so comfortable with who I was and totally happy representing the state. I was really comfortable in my confidence and at peace with who I was. I was ready for it. I had failed and lost so many times that I didn’t expect anything, which has been good for me in life and in relationships. If you expect something out of someone or out of a job you end up getting let down, and this experience taught me to not expect anything, which sounds bad – but it’s just realistic. If you know your worth and know what you can do is awesome, you can always have good results come out of your work. Expectations just get in the way of what the result is going to be.”
By the time she was 22 in June 2016 and the reigning Miss Alabama, Hayley had emerged from the terrified 16-year-old first-time pageant competitor who hated public speaking and leaned much more towards introversion than what most people think of as a typical, extroverted, outspoken Miss Alabama.
“I had become a totally different person in all good ways,” Hayley said. “Pageants propelled me and forced me out of my comfort zone and changed who I was. I was more comfortable speaking with people and had a firm opinion on things. It feels so different at my age really knowing how I feel about topics in the world and myself. When you prepare for interviews you learn who you are and what you think about things, and hearing both sides of what people think about things helps form your own opinion. I still know people my age who don’t know how to create an opinion, and I took that away as one of the top benefits of the program, being able to know how I feel about things and express myself in a kind, respectful way. I enjoyed so much seeing how much I grew. My confidence changed so much – and not confidence because I won, but because of what I was doing in the community and the person that I was.”
Hayley became comfortable speaking in front of crowds and immediately noticed how much she enjoyed serving the community. But the job of Miss Alabama was much less glamorous than she’d thought it would be. Though many of her friends had served as Miss Alabama before her and had told her it wasn’t as glitzy as one might expect from the outside looking in, Hayley still faced a learning curve as she discovered that no one wrote her speeches for her – she wrote every speech for every appearance – and that she often drove herself to appearances, in addition to booking her own appearances herself.
“This is a service-driven role and is less glamorous than people think, but it’s really fulfilling because of the people that you meet,” Hayley said. “You create connections with people and you meet people from across the state. The stories you hear, the connections you make – that was one of the most valuable experiences to me.”
There is a little glamour, Hayley admits – she had a personal trainer during her year of service, which she doesn’t have now, she says – but the success of a titleholder’s year as Miss Alabama is solely in her hands. How busy or not busy a Miss Alabama is totally reflects the amount of effort a titleholder is willing to put into the job.
“I spent a lot of time every day marketing myself and getting appearances booked,” she said. “It’s a little easier if you’re a vocalist, because you can sing anywhere. As a dancer, I had a little more trouble booking appearances because whoever was hosting the event had to have a stage.”
And when on appearances, you never really knew what to expect, Hayley said.
“Half of the fun of being Miss Alabama is not knowing what you’re going to do at an appearance when you get there,” she said. “Sometimes you have to wing it. You could show up and think a speech was only supposed to be five to 10 minutes, and they tell you they’re ready for you to speak for 30 minutes. At that time, it was my first time to have to wing it. I’m a very prepared person, so that stressed me out a lot. Now I’m like ‘I’m so glad I had to do that!’ Because I have to do that all the time.”
***
Miss Alabama is crowned in June, and in September her first bigtask happens – competing in the Miss America competition. Though Hayley didn’t make Top 10 at Miss America, she won the Children’s Miracle Network Miracle Maker Award, won the Quality of Life Award, and won the STEM Scholarship Award.
“I ended up taking home more money than the second runner-up,” Hayley said.
She said she never fully settled into her role as Miss Alabama until she returned from Miss America. Hayley – who tap danced at every one of her five Miss Alabama appearances – changed her talent routine before Miss America, so she had a lot to do to get ready for Miss America.
“[Before Miss America] I was full-force, practicing my routine, getting my costume, doing all of the fittings I needed, interview practice with a new set of people – I didn’t have time to think until after I got back from Miss America,” she said.
When she returned, the next nine months were spent making appearances, further promoting her platform – each titleholder has a platform, or an issue that is of utmost importance to them that they advocate for throughout their year of service – and, one of her highlights, visiting children’s hospitals.
“I loved all of the times I got to go to the children’s hospital,” Hayley said. “It was always just so awesome to me, getting to spend time with them.”
One of Hayley’s highlights during her year as Miss Alabama was going to the National Peanut Festival in Dothan, Ala. – which, like so many of her appearances, turned out to be a 180 from what she expected it to be.
“This was one of my favorite memories,” she said. “I thought I was going to go to this appearance, sign autographs, and sit at a table with the crown on. When I got there, they said ‘You’re just here to have fun at the park all day.’ I was in a dress, and I was not prepared. I rode all of the rides with my crown on. I always look back and think that was one of my favorite appearances. I got to let loose and have fun. I had no job to do there but enjoy the park.”
But her year as Miss Alabama – though she had wanted it for so many years – wasn’t perfect.
“It was a little bit tough for me, honestly,” Hayley said. “I lived by myself, which I’d never done before. I suffered from a little bit of depression and loneliness. I also was so used to being extremely busy – in college I had worked a part-time job, gone to college, and done pageant stuff on my extra time – and I had to quit my job and school for Miss Alabama, so things slowed down tremendously for me. I didn’t know what to do with my free time. I knew [being Miss Alabama] wasn’t like oh, they escort you here and hold your purse – I knew it wasn’t super glamorous, and I wasn’t expecting that – but I also just didn’t know and didn’t prepare for being alone a lot. It was really weird to live by myself and be alone with myself a lot, then all of the sudden be with a crowd of 400 people and have to be so outgoing and extroverted. It’s a weird life for sure, but it’s worth it. When you do get out and make connections with people, it’s amazing, but not being so busy was really hard for me.”
That’s just it – most find that, even after achieving their wildest dream, while it’s worth it, it’s not often as perfect as you’ve fantasized it in your head to be. Even with a crown on your head and statewide notoriety, life still creeps in – and it’s not always easy.
***
Hayley had a solid year as Miss Alabama, and in June 2017 she gave up her crown to her successor, Jessica Proctor. Hayley – who always envisioned her future career as an optometrist – had another one of those difficult “Is it worth it?” conversations when she returned to UAB post-Miss Alabama and realized that, though she loved studying the eye, the rest of the body didn’t interest her as much. It was a shock to many who knew her that she didn’t go to optometry school – even her platform while competing in pageants was centered around eye health.
“I’m glad I decided not to go [to optometry school],” she said. “Me trying to fulfill other people’s idea of what success is – that’s not happiness.”
She ended up graduating from UAB with a degree in healthcare marketing – after learning so many marketing skills as Miss Alabama – and, the weekend after her college graduation, got married to husband Will and became Hayley deShazo. (Many of her fellow competitors in Miss Alabama were her bridesmaids.) Right after she returned from her honeymoon, she started her first full-time job doing healthcare marketing for American Family Care. Since then, she and Will have started their own company based around their shared love of food called Till, a local online farmers’ market where customers can pick and choose between a dozen Alabama farms and have a customized basket delivered to their house each week. Hayley, now 25, left American Family Care last July to work for she and Will’s business full-time.
Just like in her career – she thought for most of her life she’d be an optometrist but now finds such fulfillment running Till with her husband – her journey to Miss Alabama didn’t happen the way she thought it would. Oftentimes, Hayley said, when things don’t happen the way you think they will or want them to, that’s where the magic happens.
“Sometimes people focus too much on one specific plan,” she said. “It’s great to work toward what you think you’re supposed to be or what you think you’re supposed to do, but there’s not always just one way to get to the top of the mountain. There are several ways, and it doesn’t have to be what you think it has to be. If you fail, there’s always another route to get somewhere.”
Just a few days before Hayley and I spoke, her dad – as he often does – posted an inspirational post on Facebook. This one featured Yoda saying “You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried.”
Hayley failed four times in her quest for the Miss Alabama crown. But, really, she never failed, because every time she didn’t win, she learned something new.
“You have to put yourself out there to fail, otherwise you never achieve anything,” Hayley said. “I respect and love failure. As Christians, we’re taught to appreciate suffering because God trusts us enough to put us in that situation to begin with. It’s not like I pray every night ‘Lord, bring suffering into my life,’ but my goal is to prepare for failures to come by mentally being strong and mentally being connected to Him so they won’t shake you as much – to have that unwavering faith and trust that it’s all going to work out. You don’t always have to be so set in one certain way that you prepare and are ready for. When you’re down and your dreams feel delayed, you can sit there in that and recognize it and sit in that sadness, but just know you can’t stay. You need to know when it’s time to move on. I’m a proponent of recognizing how you feel and acknowledging it. Sometimes you just need a day to not think about it. But the next day after that, you must mentally prepare yourself to take on even more.”
Hayley’s entire life – and especially her quest for the Miss Alabama crown – hasn’t happened as she thought it would. Instead, it has been even better and more fulfilling than she thought possible, and during her five year wait for the Miss Alabama crown, she not only paid for her entire undergraduate degree – with more left over should she choose to pursue another degree one day – but she learned about herself and became the capable, confident woman she is today. And, ultimately, because she never gave up, she saw her delayed dream become a dream fulfilled, a testament to her tenacity, perseverance, and faith.
Were those five years working towards the crown worth the wait? Absolutely, Hayley said.
“I am so thankful for everything in life,” she said. “My goal every day is to wake up with gratitude and to live in a spirit of gratitude always. Being grateful for something means that you don’t regret and wouldn’t change the way it happened. I am absolutely so thankful it took me so long [to win Miss Alabama]. It was absolutely, absolutely worth it. It happened at the perfect time.”