This was not a beauty pageant contest but a job recruitment process in Northeast China where over 1,000 girls, who wanted to become air-hostess or models, stripped down to their bikinis on Monday.
The event was reportedly hosted by Oriental Beauty, a modelling agency at a school in Qingdao.
The recent high school graduates paraded on a catwalk as representatives from both aviation and fashion industries watched them closely.
According to People’s Daily Online, the candidates had to be at least five foot six, "elegant, slim, have sweet voice and have no scars in the exposed part of their skin.”
However, if a woman has an exceptional look, the height restriction may be dropped to five foot five.
The girls who were successful would go on to train in their chosen industries – whether as air hostesses or models, the report said.
The unusual event attracted applicants from Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Jilin and a number of other nearby provinces.
China’s aviation industry has been in news before for sexism and exploitation of women. In a recent article in The Conversation, Xiaoni Ren, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, Cardiff Metropolitan University, says, "In their effort to gain competitive advantage over one another and internationally, Chinese airlines have adopted some of the most retrograde and sexist employment practices, which many of their Western counterparts have been associated with historically.
She said the interviews she had conducted with women in the industry showed how female employees were treated like commodities and exploited.
