Exclusive: Meet the real Eden Wood

The six-year-old US pageant princess is translating her tiara success into a push for world domination. We meet the girl behind the make-up.

Most six-year-old girls spend their time playing with their dolls or watching The Wiggles. Eden Wood is not one of them. Her spare time is filled with hair appointments, fittings and spray tans. Eden – the tiny darling of the controversial US child beauty pageant circuit – has no interest in being “normal”. She wants to “be a superstar and rule the world”.

This week she kicks off her quest for world domination by heading Down Under to conquer Australia, a newcomer to child pageants. And far from retiring as some reports suggest, her agent says there’s a new CD to promote and a film in the pipeline when she returns home. Eden hails from Arkansas – a small town called Taylor, population 566. Arkansas is called “The Natural State”, which is pretty funny given Eden’s glammed-up appearance.

On the eve of her flight to Australia, Woman’s Day meets the blonde mini-star at a pageant in Texas. She is caked in make-up with fluttering false eyelashes and an extravagant sequinned costume. Dubbed the “new JonBenet Ramsey”, Eden is strikingly similar to the child beauty pageant star who was found dead at her Colorado home in 1996. But Eden’s made-up face and over-the-top outfits are a vision the fans who follow her career on the US reality TV show Toddlers & Tiaras have come to expect.

“She looks just like a porcelain doll,” says Eden’s mum Mickie, 46, a drama teacher who has been entering her daughter in competitions since she was a year old. Eden’s looks provoke love-hate responses. A storm of protests met the announcement that she would be travelling to Australia with the pageant company Universal Royalty.