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There has never been anything like this in Moscow - a beauty contest.
Just a few years ago this occasion would have been seen as the pernicious influence
of the West, a dangerous crack in the moral foundations of society.
How many prejudices have been overcome!
And above all - a sanctimonious attitude towards the beauty of the female body.
[Contest jury, including artist Il'ia Glazunov]
Komsomol bureaucrats pretended that the contest was something entirely different.
Perhaps a type of athletics, or theater, of aerobics.
They began their usual fuss about selecting the deserving girl
based on her social background.
And still it was a beauty contest. A desire
to tear apart the habits of everyday life is so natural for young people.
A desire to go beyond the limits of the normal, possible, boring,
a desire for change. And of course, there was a queen, a winner.
We are still unused to all this. An award is given not to a leading production worker,
not to an honor student, not to a Komsomol activist,
but just to pretty Masha Kalinina - the first winner of the first beauty contest in Moscow.
Thus we arrive at norms so natural for other cultures.