Man Disguises Himself To Enter A Women’s Beauty Contest And Makes It To The Final Round

Anandita Malhotra

6 years ago

How many times have you heard people telling you ‘it’s the inner beauty that counts!’ And how many Tumblr and Instagram quotes tell you not to focus on your outer appearance but you work on your soul. But this story proves it.

Arina Aliyeva, one of the finalists of the 2018 Miss Virtual Kazakhstan beauty contest. She recently announced, however, that she was, in fact, a 22-year-old man who had joined the contest to prove a pertinent point.

According to Oddity Central, it began with an argument he was having with his friends about female beauty.

Eli Diaghilev, a young Kazakh male model argued than in the olden days qualities like individuality and charisma were valued. However, now young women chase trends- be it in fashion, makeup or hair. They think it’s the key to be beautiful.

Eli also added that because of the cosmetics, digital editing, Photoshop and the general falseness in the beauty industry it wasn’t difficult for a man to pass off as a woman. His friends didn’t agree with him so he decided to prove a point by signing up for the Miss Virtual Kazakhstan beauty contest.

With the help of a makeup artist and hairstyle, Eli Diaghilev transformed himself into Arina Aliyeva. He had been working as a male model since he was 17, so had an idea of trends and workings of the industry.

He posted pictures of himself as Arina online and waited to see what the public’s reaction would be.

Arina Aliyeva reached became one of the finalists of the competition and Eli had proved his point. So, he released a video of himself, announcing that he was actually a girl. He said,

“I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction of the people of Kazakhstan and the fact that many supported my actions. It was not my intention to simply deceive people, I wanted to draw the attention to the fact that adhering to the same beauty standards is not important. It’s the naturalness and individuality of each person that really matter, not something that is shown somewhere and labelled as fashionable and beautiful even if it doesn’t fit you.”

He was then disqualified from the competition and replaced by another model.

I think this man proved a brilliant point calling out the beauty industry and our society, in general, these days. With cosmetics, editing software and the virtual world, in general, it isn’t difficult to completely transform your look. The stress we lay on beauty and outer appearance is enormous. Let the story of Eli, prove that we need to break this trend.

While the message is all fine, the irony of the whole gimmick is that Eli is a male model in the same industry that pays him to look beautiful, externally.

Food for thought.