It’s debatable whether beauty contests are actually a worthwhile use of your time and/or money and it seems like one guy wanted to prove this once and for all, by entering himself into one dressed up as a girl and seeing how far he could go.

Images VIA

Incredibly, 22 year old Ilay Dyagilev managed to get to the finals of the contest in Kazakhstan, beating off competition from over 4000 other entrants with the personality of ‘Arina Alivea’ before he decided that enough was enough and he should probably come clean about his deception:

My friends and I, we had a debate on beauty, and I decided to take part in the pageant. I’ve always been a champion of natural beauty.

You can see that many young women look identical, the same make-up, the same style – and they believe that they are beautiful if they follow trends. I don’t think so.

I came through to the finale and decided to expose the identity of Arina Alieva when I realised it had gone too far.

At the very beginning there were around 4,000 applications from across Kazakhstan, but I got to the final.

Absolute joker. After he admitted that he was actually a man, he was booted out of the contest and replaced by 18 year old Aikerim Temirkhanova. She had received 1975 votes compared to Arina Alieva’s 2012. No news on who ended up winning the contest just yet.

So what does this tell us about the nature of beauty? I guess nothing really, other than it’s pretty easy for a guy to dress up as a woman and fool a bunch of people into thinking that, but I guess that isn’t really anything new in 2018? Just be careful I guess, because what you see isn’t always what you get.

For more beauty contests, check out the world’s first butthole beauty contest. That’s something I can get behind.