Confidence can be elusive for adolescent and teen girls, who too often are encouraged to seek it from fleeting sources – makeup, fashion, peer approval and acceptance.

When she started middle school, Aubrianna Miller didn’t like what she saw – a social marketplace with an aesthetic currency she believed was beyond her reach. At that point, the Colorado Springs teen wasn’t clear on her loves but she knew what she didn’t like: pastels and perky things. The color pink made her see red.

“I hated all things glitter and anything that wasn’t black, gray, silver or blue. I despised pink,” she said.

She was too shy to order her own food at restaurants. She loathed school, slouched in silence around strangers, head down, dyed-black hair flat-ironed so it hid her face. She looked like she didn’t care how she looked, which was her goal – and the opposite of the truth.

“I used to worry 24/7. I’d be looking scared to death at everybody I passed down the hallway, like, ‘What do they think about me?'” she said.

“She wouldn’t put a ponytail in because it meant she had to be open,” said Aubrianna’s mother, Christine.

Her father, Scott, always knew his daughter was beautiful, but soon after she turned 12 it was as though that quality became something Aubrianna tried to hide.

“She stopped wanting to look pretty. She made a strike against pink. She made a lot of judgments against cheerleaders and girly girls. She would roll her eyes at that kind of character and didn’t want to be associated with them,” said Scott, who went through a rebellious phase himself as a youth. “I was a punk in high school and a little bit in college. I supported her self expression and didn’t want to squelch who she was.”

But who was she? Shy girl, tomboy, emo, goth. Or none of the above.

For 16-year-old Aubrianna, the course to her identity – and a deep-rooted, enduring source of confidence – meant making peace with being pretty in pink.

“When I first got introduced to pageants, I thought, ‘Those girls are going to be so stuck up when they get older.’ I thought they were awful and I’ll never do that,” said Aubrianna, who nonetheless found herself intrigued by the Lifetime reality series “Kim of Queens,” which follows former Miss Georgia and successful pageant coach Kim Gravel. “I thought they were just for pretty girls who were very, very skinny, but it’s not that way really.”

Aubrianna’s evolution in thinking took her parents by surprise, to put it lightly.

“Quite honestly, there was no subtle. There was no gradual,” Scott said. “She walked into my kitchen one day as I was preparing dinner and said, ‘Dad, I want to do a pageant.’ When she said that, I literally dropped what was in my hands.”

Then he calmly reminded his daughter: You realize that’s everything you hate, right?

“She said, ‘I want to be able to say I did it once, that I did the hair and the heels and the dress.’ I was, like, ‘All right,'” Scott said.

The National American Miss competition bills itself as a confidence-builder for young girls. There is no swimsuit competition, and contestants are judged on the quality of their public speaking, interviews and community outreach as much as how they look in an evening gown.

“It’s so hard not to judge someone by their appearance, especially in the arena of a pageant, but this is not about what people look like. It’s about building confidence and identity and being comfortable with yourself,” Christine said. “It really was an amazing process.”

Still, there’s no escaping the beauty pageant aspect and the need to look the part, in all its pastel and glittery glory.

“I had no idea what I’d have to do to be in a pageant. I just did the research that people came out of it being completely confident in who they are and what they want to be,” Aubrianna said. “Then when I went into it, I was like, ‘We have to wear makeup? We have to wear heels? We have to wear pink?'”

Through his chiropractic practice, Scott had become friends with the mother of a local beauty queen and was able to set up Aubrianna with local pageant coach Chyrese Exline. Among other things done in the months leading up to that first pageant in June 2014, the duo practiced walking in heels.

“I thought she was going to break her ankles,” Christine said.

Aubrianna “gritted her teeth” and kept at it; blisters and sore muscles were a small price to pay, she figured.

“I was the shiest person on the planet, emo and goth. I don’t think I really wanted to be like that anymore and I didn’t know how to change,” she said.

When Aubrianna returned to school after the summer of her first pageant, her friends and teachers saw a new person.

“That’s when she started to blossom. She was standing up taller, she would laugh more. It was very noticeable what was happening and it really warmed all of us to see that, to see someone grow in her own skin,” said Scott, who is divorced from Christine. “Often it takes an outside source to convince them of those things – that you’re pretty, you’re talented – and that’s where the need for an outside coach comes in. It’s amazing to just see her as a human being spend 18 months and transform into a completely different person.”

After her second National Miss competition in Denver this summer, Aubrianna is certain she made the right style – and lifestyle – choice.

“I feel like this year has been even better than last year. I just feel way more confident,” she said. “I love going to school. Now, I’m, like, ‘I love my outfit today and I’m just going to strut down the hallway and be who I am.’ Now, I think pink isn’t that bad and I’m OK with glitter, too.”

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Contact Stephanie Earls: 636-0364