SALISBURY — Using her platform from her recent pageants and personal experience, Erica Leigh Averill of Salisbury wants to change both her community and the world.

Averill, who was crowned Ms. North Carolina Petite in 2023 and 2024, is working to bring awareness to eating disorders and, as she said, to show “women and girls that it’s not what you look like, it’s what you do with your life.”

Averill said more people need to be advocating for eating disorders, noting that many young girls, ages 13 and 14 and maybe younger, are altering their photos online so they look thinner or are doe-eyed.

Plus, she added, they are looking at advertising that encourages people to lose a lot of weight, “and that can be a dangerous, dangerous edge,” she said.

Averill wants to help and encourage others dealing with this problem because she herself had an eating disorder when she was younger and received help. She speaks at various eating disorder facilities “with outpatient and inpatient women to show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Her eating disorder began in high school, at which time, she didn’t think it was a big deal. However, when she began college, it became harder, she said.

When it first began, she said she was super young and would look at magazines and see the models and wanted to look like them and wondered why she couldn’t be like them. Plus, she was on the school dance team and felt she should look a certain way to fit into the uniform.

To keep from eating, she mentioned that she placed pictures of super models on her refrigerator to keep from opening it.

“I was striving to be something I wasn’t,” Averill said.

This continued through school, and she got so thin that co-workers and other people were concerned she was sick and questioned her about it and noted they could see her ribs through the clothes she was wearing.

She grew tired of this and realized that her body was not working as it should be and her stomach was messed up.

Her doctors also said her body was shutting down and she was not getting the nutrients she needed and therefore needed to get help.

She credits her primary care doctor at the time for truly saving her life and urging her to go and get help.

“She was so kind, so compassionate. She had this calming effect. I denied everything, but she knew” what was going on and made the call for her to start the process of getting help, she said.

Averill went to Renfrew For Eating Disorders Center in Charlotte, where she remained for approximately six months, “and it changed my life,” she said.

Dancing has been a big part of Averill’s life as she said it is her passion.

“It is a way for me to express myself without having to say anything,” she said.

For college she went to Savannah College of Art and Design where she studied photography and minored in ballet. She was doing choreography in Charlotte when the pandemic hit and most everything was shutting down; therefore, the decision was made for her to come back to Salisbury. She said she loves the small town feel, and “it feels like everywhere you walk, you either meet a new friend or you know them, and I love that.”

Averill had major back surgery as the result of her dancing and was in the process of recovering from that surgery when she participated in her first pageant, which she said was on a whim.

While she had done pageants in high school, which at that time, she said were cut-throat, her first reaction when a friend mentioned pageants to her was, “Me? Do pageants?” 

Her friend found the Petite USA system for women 5’6” or shorter at this time and Averill said this system was kind and welcoming. “I loved it,” she said.

She did want to stress that petite doesn’t mean thin, but it means short and this word gets taken wrong.

“I would not have the platform I have now if it was just for thin people and that truly bothers me,” she said. 

So she joined them, “and everyone was so nice.”

The Ms. Petite pageant, she said, was not in person, but was online video calls and lots of interviews. The process took weeks.

The interview was the main thing the contestants were graded on as they spoke with five judges during the interviews.

Averill said as you spoke you had to sit up straight and have the right words to say and you had to know what you wanted to say and share your message in three minutes, which she noted was hard to do and condense down what you are passionate about in that amount of time.

In time, she received both a call and an email notifying her that she had won and was Ms. North Carolina Petite.

“I was jumping up and down and I was screaming. I was just so, so happy because it was something I never thought I would do at my age but it was like now I finally had a platform,” she said.

And through that platform, she is reaching out and trying to help others who are going through anything that she has been through.

Averill said the first year she competed she was very nervous, but she made some very special friends.

Loving the system, she decided to compete for a second time, but didn’t think she would be named the winner again.

“But I did,” she said. 

With her first win, she went to Columbia, South Carolina, to receive her crown, and the second year, she received her crown and sash in the mail.

“This is something I’m going to treasure for the rest of my life,” she said.

The first week of August, she noted, the national pageant was held in Chicago, and while she didn’t win the crown, she did bring home the Sisterhood Award, along with the experience of the event where she made some of her best friends that talk daily.

The Sisterhood Award, which was voted on by the judges and people behind the scenes at the pageant, is awarded to the one woman that shows the most kindness, shows the most love, is helpful and truly shows the embodiment of sisterhood.

When asked what in particular she did to receive the award, she replied with a big smile that she was still trying to figure that out.

When talking about the pageant, Averill said she is one who has to help, and as a mother of a 13-year old, she said she thinks it’s the mom in her. 

During the national pageant, she could be seen helping some who had ripped their dress, stitching it up and at other times unofficially planning fun events for everyone and making sure all felt welcome and included.

“It’s just a sisterhood,” she said. “I never would have found these girls if it hadn’t been for doing a pageant.”

Throughout the pageant experience, she has been able to share her platform of eating disorders during the interview process as well as with the 50-plus women participating.

It was during the interview process that Averill said, “I got to really spill my heart and just tell everyone,” about her platform.

She shared about the friends she made “who are really doing great stuff,” including being published authors, doctors and more.

“A pageant is really more than people think it is because it is really women trying to change the world,” she said. “It’s more than glitter. It’s more than pretty dresses and doing your hair. It’s all about really trying to make a change.”

And a change is what Averill is determined to make locally and beyond as she is vocal about her platform on social media.

Averill has also taken Finn, her golden retriever, who is a certified therapy dog, to different hospitals and eating disorder facilities so people can love on him and calm them, and he loves it too, she said.

She has also been invited to lots of speaking engagements and would love to speak at more places.

Those who would be interested in having her come and speak, she can be reached either by email at ericaleighaverill@icloud.com or by calling her at 704-698-8190.

She said that she loves to talk with people and be that person who can say “it will get better because I’m living proof.”

Averill said she also loves to tell people that “recovery isn’t linear” as there will be up days and down days.

She wants to let people know that they are loved and there are people out there who will listen to those who are struggling.

“That’s the person I want to be. I will listen to you because I’ve been there. I wish I could just scream out to the world you will be OK.”

She is still with the greatest therapist and psychiatrist, she said; and therefore her biggest goal right now is to find places for others where they too can talk as she knows what it was like to be alone, something she said she faced when she started out.

“I can’t thank them enough for the path they’ve put me on and the encouragement that they gave me,” she said of the two, “because I don’t think I would be able to be where I am now and encourage others.”

Through it all, Averill said that the best thing has been that her daughter, Juliet, is very proud of her. For a school art project, she will be taking the photos of her mom from the recent pageant, she said, and drawing her.

“It feels so good to know that I am doing big things for my daughter to show that she can do big things as well,” she said, “and that’s really all I wanted was to show her that she can do big things, too.” 

Averill said she wants to be a great example to her daughter and others as well and “to spread the word to other young girls and not just young girls but other people my age.”

When asked what she wanted to make sure people knew, Averill stressed that she has been told many times that she can’t do things, possibly to make themselves feel better.

“I realized it’s just my time to take a stand and just spread kindness around and it’s amazing that it just took a crown for me to realize that and I just want to continue that legacy,” Averill said.”

She wants to spread that kindness and wants others to be more kind to each other and think about how they treat other people.

“I want more than anything to change the world for young girls and women,” Averill said, “to show that they also have the power to change the world. I want to encourage that in our community.”