8 Magazine/April, 2013
When she first started FIU, she majored in journalism. Her early dream was to write for Cosmo. Later, she decided she wanted to branch off into radio and television broadcasting. Diaz admits to shying away from TV production at first although it was offered in her high school. As a cheerleader, she was super concerned on how it would look and whether her peers would laugh at her. She regrets letting peer pressure and fear deter her.
I wondered how this cheerleader turned journalism student found herself with a crown, competing as Miss Black USA Florida. She remembers watching the Miss Universe pageant every year and wishing she was tall enough to enter.
However, Diaz didn’t enter her first pageant until college when she entered to win Fiji Islander Princess. Urged into it by her own sorority, she didn’t win, but she placed in a viewer’s choice category. She ran in an all-Spanish speaking Miss Carnival pageant. While she didn’t place, she says she learned a ton about how to compete and win. By the time she ran in the Alpha’s Miss Black and Gold pageant she had come into her own and was able to come away with the title. And that’s when the bug hit! She fell in love.
She immediately started competing in the Florida pageant system. She came close in quite a few but surprisingly kept losing by just a point or two. Judges would tell her how well she did, praise her performances, but somehow the titles were slipping through her fingers. Around this time is when Diaz had decided to “Big Chop” and she noticed she was one of the few black girls competing with natural hair