China's first dairy Cow Beauty Pageant’

For years China has been known for its generous deployment of bikini models to spice up industry conferences and meetings. But news that scantily clad models were recently recruited to enliven the country’s first “dairy cow beauty pageant” is being described some as utterly — or should that be utterly? — ridiculous.

Designed to promote the dairy industry of Shanyin County in the central Chinese province of Shanxi, the weekend contest pitted more than 200 cows against each other based on looks, milk and pedigree.

The concept is a strange one even for a country with more than its fair share of mystifying events. But it’s the eight bikini models hired for the bovine pageant – and made to pose awkwardly next to, and even milk, the cows – that has churned the controversy.
Photos of the girls — all of them, perhaps understandably, wearing masks — spread around traditional and social media websites on Monday, and even earned an editorial on the website of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
While noting that the popularity of beauty contests has been rising (China’s Yu Wenxia won the Miss World pageant over the weekend), the editorial argues that in this case things seem to have gone a bit too far. “Beautiful girls have far greater ability to attract attention that the milk cow contestants,” it reads. “How do you think that makes the cows feel?”
The editorial also calls attention to one model who said given the natural setting of the dairy farm, posing in a bikini felt “harmonious.”
The article allows the girl might simply have been embarrassed and making excuses, but reserves little sympathy for the organizer of the conference, who it sarcastically declares must have a peculiar understanding of what adds excitement to an event.