KEY POINTS:
Wow! No wonder poor little Yang Peiyi found it so hard to make the cut for the Olympic opening ceremony. Beauty in China is clearly not subjective.
It is not in the eye of the beholder.
Beauty is defined - by rulers, ratios and chopsticks.
The grace and general gorgeousness of the Olympics medal ceremony girls has been remarked on almost as often as people - well, people with the XY chromosome - have remarked on the athleticism and gravity-defying antics of the Brazilian beach volleyball team.
Even if New Zealand hadn't won a medal, there's still a certain pleasure in watching six doll-like creatures carry the spoils of victory as carefully as if they're carrying the Crown Jewels.
The girls' smiles are beatific and their poise is remarkable. They really are something special. But their fabulousness is not random. Not at all.
Just 337 girls were chosen from the more than 5000 lovelies who applied, and standards were rigorous.
For a start, wannabe ceremony girls had to be university educated, aged between 18 and 24 and stand between 1.6m and 1.76m tall.
To be successful, they had to have healthy complexions and be "plump" but not "fat".
Then the complicated maths came in. The width of their pert little noses and the length of their faces had to meet a certain ratio and their eyes had to be three-tenths the length of the face - although whether the measurements for the eyes were in terms of height or width I'm not sure.
Once those criteria were met, the beauties were sent off to a charm boot camp. They had to run 1000m a day - just enough to burn off carbs, but not enough to make them sinewy.
After the physical exertions, these intelligent young lovelies learned to stand for hours in their high heels and honed the art of the perfect smile - and, in case you were wondering, the perfect smile shows eight teeth. No more, no less.
If you want to gussy up your smile, you can practise it at home by standing in front of a mirror with a chopstick between your teeth. Seriously. That's how they do it.
I'm so happy I didn't know about the ratios for facial perfection when I was a girl.
It was hard enough coming to terms with the fact that I didn't, and would never, have a heart-shaped face - the face that Dolly magazine dictated one had to have to be considered a great beauty.
And I was forever failing the pencil test - the one where you stick a pencil under your boobs and if they're upright and perky, it immediately drops to the floor.
Failing the pert-breast pencil test, the chopstick-smile test AND the eye-width-to-face-length ratio test would have completely destroyed me as an adolescent.
Even if I'm not a beauty, I can appreciate it in others, and the medal girls would take gold in the Hotties event, with the Brazilians a close shave behind for silver.
