China is holding a Miss Plastic Surgery pageant, where the contestants will strut their surgically-altered facial and body parts. As as article at Yahoo News explains,

Like many women in China who are increasingly influenced by Western standards of beauty, contestants have typically undergone surgery for bigger busts, larger eyes, more defined noses and slimmer bodies. Plastic surgery has taken off in China in recent years as people become wealthier and more conscious of their appearance.

Sponsors of the contestants -- from private beauty clinics to cosmetic surgery hospitals -- are vying for more business in a booming industry. . . However salons -- which often carry out cosmetic surgery -- have so far gone unregulated, and staff are often untrained.

Is this an inevitable consequence of globalization and the spread of western culture around the world? Is it a recipe for disaster as Chinese businesses try to apply the same cost-cutting procedures they use to produce consumer goods like shoes into doing plastic surgery? Perhaps both?