CHINA: New China is crazy about plastic surgery and equally passionate about beauty pageants. It was only a matter of time before someone thought of putting the two together.
Now Miss Artificial Beauty, China's first beauty pageant for women who have had cosmetic surgery, starts this week.
The rules are clear for the estimated 100 want-to-be queens. To make sure no one has foregone the essential nip and tuck, contestants must present certification from their doctors proving they have indeed gone under the knife.
"Many people in China don't understand the plastic surgery phenomenon. We provide these girls with a platform to show people that cosmetic surgery is normal," said Mr Lu Junqing of Beijing Culture & Media which is staging the event.
Ms Lu Xiaoyu from rural Hebei got a new nose, a cute set of dimples and a pair of much sought-after creased eyelids, hoping the make-over will see her through to the finals.
"My family was good looking, but not me. Now my eyes look much bigger. I feel like I'm living in a dream," said the dyed and curled brunette.
For the old guard in Communist China, beauty pageants were bourgeois "spiritual pollution", a hangover from pre-Communist days when rich and powerful men attended pageants to choose a concubine.
The beauty industry is worth around 20 billion a year and is evident in every shopping mall in every two-horse town in China.
Mr Lu got the idea for the pageant after he disqualified an "artificial beauty" from one of his beauty contests for having had cosmetic surgery.
Ms Yang Yuan, a long-legged model from Henan province, was removed after she was spotted in an advertisement for cosmetic surgery. The would-be catwalk queen then lost her lawsuit against the organisers.
"They kicked me out of the beauty competition because they said my case would encourage young people to have cosmetic surgery operations, regardless of the risk. But now they are holding a competition for people who've had cosmetic surgery - isn't that a contradiction?
Ms Yang feels she has been treated like a "ball they can kick around" so she will not be lending her looks this time round.
Plastic surgery clinics are popping up all over the country and the cosmetic surgery industry has gone from being practically non-existent to a business worth about €2 billion a year, and growing steadily.
Now low-income women are forking out months of earnings for surgery that will give their eyes a more rounded, Western look or the crease that gives their eyes that sought-after definition. Thinner eyes are also much in demand, as are boob jobs.
Back-street botched jobs abound, with fake doctors carrying out illegal operations - around 200,000 plastic surgery disasters were reported during the 1990s.
For a lot of women in New China, the decision to go for "man-made beauty" is less about vanity than it is about the belief that better-looking women find better jobs and marry wealthier men.
The top three finalists will receive scholarships to study at Beijing's most prestigious universities, subject to successful completion of the entrance exams.