http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4749107/?GT1=3256MOSCOW - Russia's search for its next Miss Universe contestant took a surprise turn last week when a 15-year-old schoolgirl swept up a majority of votes in an online beauty contest and became an overnight feminist heroine.
Alyona Pisklova's" photo was an immediate hit in Russia's first and largest competition designed to let the public choose its representative to the famous annual pageant.
The Moscow schoolgirl was surprised that her picture had been entered. Friends sent in her photo as a joke, replacing her last name, which she has withheld, with the name of a boy she had a crush on
Voting for Pisklova turned into an Internet phenomonen in Russia, as web users expressed their views on much more than on the choice of a regular-looking girl over long-legged models with touched up photos.
Her supporters quickly launched their own website, stopbarbie.org.ru to attract votes and launch a broad-based manifesto.
The website declared that a vote for Pisklova was a vote against the "Barbification" of society, against "unnatural beauties who cannot be distinguished from each other, fake emotions, smiles and gazes in the lenses of profession photographers” and other accepted standards of beauty.
Pisklova's measurements, according to her entry, did not match the model standard of 35-23-35, the site proudly pointed out.
In addition, the backers maintained that a vote for Pisklova represented a vote against other Western imports, such as large faceless corporations as well as a protest against such oddities such as cigarettes without nicotine, and coffee without caffeine.
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