Slated to be held late next month, the contest for the world's most unauthentic beauty queen has drawn more than 30 contestants from Japan, Britain, the United States and China, organisers said.

""I want to tell society that everyone can be beautiful,'' said Miss Liu, 22, the first person to sign up for the contest. ""There are many ways to become beautiful, but the shortest and safest is through plastic surgery.'

With a booming economy and an end to decades of official repression of beauty pageants, China is finding itself in a frenzy of plastic surgery and beauty contests that is increasingly changing how people see themselves in the mirror. The mantra these days is not just to flaunt your looks if you have them, but to change them completely if you are not satisfied.

Plastic surgery has been gaining popularity slowly in China since the 1990s, and many beauty contests have operated for years despite the lack of official approval. But the floodgates swung wide open after two events last year - the country's first legally sanctioned beauty pageant and the emergence of China's first ""artificial beauty'', Miss Hao Lulu. Barely 10 years ago, beauty contests were a forbidden topic in the state media.

More recently, in an incident now legendary in the pageant circuit, Chinese police gatecrashed the secretly held finale of the 2002 Miss Universe-China finals in the southern Guangdong province and closed down the event. The organisers sneaked back later in the night to restage it and crown 18-year-old model Zhou Ling as the first Miss Universe-China. Today, however, hardly a month goes by without some major beauty or modelling contest somewhere in China … not to mention the off-beat contests for ""artificial beauties'' and the elderly.

But probably no one has done more to redefine the notion of beauty in modern China than Miss Hao, whose audacious attempt at a head-to-toe makeover lasting more than 200 days set the 20-billion-yuan (S$4.1-billion) cosmetic surgery industry abuzz. Her gruelling extreme makeover sparked copycat attempts in many parts of the country. The ensuing media frenzy pushed plastic surgery into the public consciousness in a way about which advertisers could only dream. Newspaper ads day in and day out now exhort the Chinese to get bigger eyes, firmer breasts, shapelier thighs and a slimmer waist.

Ordinary Chinese of all ages seem to be getting into the act, if state media reports are anything to go by. The official Xinhua news agency reported recently that an anxious mother had asked plastic surgeons to give her three-year-old daughter dimples so that she could be groomed to be a model from a tender age, while a 75-year-old granny from Hebei apparently had her breasts enlarged because she wanted to improve her looks.

Mr Lu Junqing, whose company Tian Jiu Media is organising the pageant for the artificial beauties, reckons the Chinese are just making up for lost time after decades of repression. ""In the 1970s, you would have been criticised or labelled a petty bourgeois for dressing up. But that has changed with the reform and opening up of China, though some people still can't accept it. ""This is one reason why we are organising this contest for the artificial beauties ... to show people that they have a good heart and are just like "natural beauties','' he said.

But as with many other trends here, there is a more pressing motivation: economic competition. The unspoken rule in Chinese society is that beautiful people get priority treatment in every field, be it in the job hunt or in finding a partner, said Mr Lu and other observers. He added: ""Due to the prevalence of this unspoken rule, plastic surgery is not just a personal issue, but an investment decision as well.''

Miss Liu, who could well be China's first ""artificial'' beauty queen, thinks that she has seen the future. And it's plastic.

She said: ""I think our society is progressing, and the notion of beauty is also changing. ""In the past, we thought that a woman was beautiful as long as she could work in the field. But that has changed. ""I feel honoured that I have been picked to become an artificial beauty and I have nothing to hide. We can't always be stuck in the same phase.'' - Published in The Straits Times on 19 Oct 2004.