At 3 years old, McKenzie Cole was using her pageant play antics to entertain customers at Crown To Heels, her mother’s downtown boutique.

Now, at the tender age of 5, she is set to become a reality television star as she and her family add a slice of Southern hospitality to the often brash, audacious and controversial world of TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras.”

A film crew for the popular show, which documents the lives of preteen beauty queens, spent several days last week filming McKenzie and her family as she prepared for a pageant in Pearl.

The episode will air in the show’s fifth season during the summer. The family said they are contractually obligated not to talk about their experiences on the show or share the result of last week’s pageant.

Michelle Cole — who has won Mrs. Mississippi USA and Mrs. Mississippi America — said her daughter learned the basics of her pageantry at the shop that she sold last year. Customers and friends constantly told her to enter her daughter in pageants, but she was apprehensive at first. There was simply too much drama and too many pushy parents.

“When I realized that she really did like it and was an entertainer, I moved past that point,” Cole said.

McKenzie’s been in about 75 pageants since she was 3, and has a room full of crowns — her favorite is a jeweled skull tiara she won in Indianapolis. They sit atop a wardrobe in her room, which is also filled with sashes and glamor shots juxtaposed with a bed full of stuffed animals and the carved, painted wooden letters hanging on the wall that spell out her name.

Cole emphasizes that even with all the pageant experience her daughter is just a normal 5-year-old. She likes to spend time outdoors, whether it’s at the hunting camp with her father, Josh, or just riding her pink and white Barbie bicycle with her brother, Caden, tagging along behind.

Cole was fine with her daughter competing as long as McKenzie was happy doing it, but when the girl first asked about the possibility of being on television, Cole put her foot down.

“I said we were absolutely not going to do ‘Toddlers & Tiaras,”’ she said.

After prayers and much pleading from Mc-Kenzie, Cole said, she gave in and decided it would be best for someone to convey pageants in a positive light.

Newsmaking clips of the show often portray stereotypical pageant mothers who push their sugar-addled children on stage and talk in a condescending fashion about the other contestants. Cole said none of those things describe her more kind approach to pageantry.

“I try to bring the positive to pageants,” she said. “I try to keep it really polite.”

That positivity includes never uttering negative words, lending a helping hand to fellow contestants and always saying thank you to judges, no matter how cantankerous they might be.

The primary goal for the family is to ensure that McKenzie is enjoying herself, Cole said. If the time ever comes that McKenzie stops enjoying pageants, the family will stop participating.

“This is not something forced, for sure,” she said.

McKenzie said she enjoys the pageants for now — except for the interview portion — and likes to make friends but her goal is to be a teacher, not a beauty queen.

Her favorite part of pageants is the makeup and fancy clothing, especially swimwear.

“I like to swim and I got to swim in a hot tub last week,” she said.

She gets all dolled up in full makeup and outfits nearly every other weekend. She’s also competed in “natural” pageants, but prefers contests full of glitz and glamour, her mother said.

“She just likes them better,” Cole said. “She knows when she has her makeup on and it’s time to perform.”

Controversy recently surrounded “Toddlers & Tiaras” after June Shannon told the shows producers that she gives her 6-year-old daughter a mixture of Mountain Dew and Red Bull to help the girl have energy on long pageant days. Other parents have admitted to feeding their children copious amounts of Pixy Stixs.

“My child might get one Pixy stick, but she doesn’t need a sugar high to get on stage,” Cole said.