China to hold Miss Plastic Surgery pageant

BEIJING (Reuters)- China is giving the beauty pageant a surgical makeover with plans to anoint its first Miss Plastic Surgery this October, state media say.


Open to women from any country, the only requirement in the made-to-order competition is proof of inauthenticity -- in the form of a doctor's certificate of cosmetic surgery, the China Daily said.


The idea for the pageant came after one woman was barred from a traditional beauty contest because she had spent more than 110,000 yuan (7,138 pounds) on plastic surgery that gave her a whole new face, it said.


The recent rise of China's "man-made beauties" has been attributed to a common sentiment that better-looking women find better jobs and marry wealthier men, it said.


Chinese people spend about 20 billion yuan a year altering their looks, the newspaper said.


Communist China, which once considered make-up and beauty contests as bourgeois, has increasingly latched on to pageants and played for the first time to the Miss World competition in 2003.


Last month, China announced plans for a beauty pageant for the elderly, with contestants aged 55 and over competing in the Zhen'ap Cup National Contest of the Beauty of the Gray-Head Group.