After all the pageants and the politics, a cathartic visit back to her home village was a powerful reminder of how much can change in even a decade.
Of all the pageants she's been to, of everything she's seen, she says that "the most distasteful is the behaviour of the parents and the way they act towards the winners".
Part carnival, part protest, all pageant, Bread and Puppet productions express political outrage and satire, sometimes coarse and raw.
All pageant employees were also required to obtain "working with children checks". While it appears that in the future these types of events won't be welcome at town halls, they will likely still be held, particularly at hotels like their American cousins (if they aren't welcome at hotels then the link between "Irish Traveler" events and child beauty pageants becomes stronger in my eyes).
But Ms Dinnage said Alana's mother June had put the money from the show into trust funds for her daughters, and was the "least pushy" of all the pageant mothers.
I'm sure all the pageant world is, as a grown-up--not the teen stuff, which I think is very troubled now--but as a grown woman, you're allowed to do that and make a better place for yourself.
Whatever else carnival may be, it is above all a pageant and no time for tears.
It was just like all those other pageants that pretends like it isn't all just about being a weird version of hot, except less sequins and more traditional African garb, music, and dancing.
Not all reality pageants buzz with such intrigue.
Then there are those killjoys who worry that all beauty pageants worsen the shallowness, vacuity, vapidity and narcissism of today's youth.
