China - Olympic 'beauty bootcamp'

Can you stand for two hours in stilettos, balance a book on your head whilst gripping chopsticks in your mouth ? If so you could be a hostess in the Chinese Olympics.


China has begun training the first of 1,250 teenage girls as hostesses for next year's Olympics, at what is billed as a charm school — but is more like a boot camp for beauties.

For girls hoping to be selected to take part in the award ceremonies, that means enduring a gruelling schedule of etiquette and movement classes as they are groomed, just outside Beijing, to appear alongside medal-winning athletes.
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More than 560,000 people have applied to be volunteers at the Games — the largest number in Olympic history.
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Making the grade requires a discipline unusual in teenagers. Like the other girls at the Beijing Changping Vocational School, 17-year-old Wang Hong gets up at 5am every day.

She spends hours standing in stilettos, while balancing a book on her head and with a pair of chopsticks clamped between her teeth to improve her smile.
"Once I had to stand and smile for two hours," Miss Wang told a Chinese newspaper. "I have to wear three bandages on my feet after walking in the high heels."
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For Miss Wang, all the effort and pain will be worthwhile if she can help hand out medals to China's most famous athletes, such as Liu Xiang, the reigning Olympic and World 110 metre hurdles champion, or escort visiting VIPs.

Some of the girls, though, have already been ruled out for not meeting the Beijing Olympic Committee's stringent criteria. These include fair and unblemished skin and, according to some Chinese reports, not having a big bottom.



Somehow I don't think I would stand a chance, I mean the ability to get home when pissed wearing DMs probably isn't ladylike enough is it, let alone the fact that my arse wouldn't meet their 'stringent criteria' :-)
Oh and I wonder if something similar will happen in Stratford, East London , for the 2012 Olympics ? Knowing the area quite well I'm not sure these are 'attributes' that abound in the area.

What do you think Mja ;-) ?

pic :two Newham women having tea:-)