The word is in: China's 50 most beautiful women have more brains than bosom. And that is making a lot of netizens very unhappy.

A survey by 19 of the country's "mainstream media outlets", including The Beijing News, joined hands to conduct a research project. It started with an online poll, followed by an expert panel that sifted public opinion and called the winning shots.

The top three contestants in Stage One were Li Yuchun, Shang Wenjie and Zhao Wei. The first two were champions of the Supergirl television show while the third is a popular actress who made her name from a runaway television hit ten years ago.

The top three final winners are Yang Lan, a Columbia University-educated television hostess; Annie Yi, a Taiwanese singer-actress who also dabbles in writing; and Yu Dan, the Beijing professor whose chicken-soup-for-the-soul interpretation of Confucius classics made her a television superstar.

Personally, I favor the latter group even though they are by no means Thelma and Louis or Madam Curie, and their talent has been blown up infinitely by the tube.

What is really puzzling is the survey conductors' intent and methodology. As we all know, beauty is subjective. What one considers beautiful may draw sneers from another. To ask the public to nominate beautiful people is ill-conceived at best and ignorant at worst. And to totally ignore the result of the poll is a slap on one's own face.

Organizers should know that online polls invariably pin down popular stars with loyal followings. That's the way of democracy - it goes for the lowest common denominator. The higher you go on the intellectual pyramid, the smaller the fan base.

To substitute a popular vote with an elitist tallying is intended to kill two birds with one stone: Hey, our research is based on public opinion, but actually we hold our noses at your selections, which are so much below our taste. It is sheer hypocrisy.

This mentality is best captured in the old saying, "Master Ye's love for the dragon". The proverbial Ye craves a dragon, but when it actually descends on his abode, he flees in terror. The same goes for some of China's intellectuals, who pray for democracy, but as soon as ordinary people have a say in public affairs they feel their voice is diluted and drowned out.

When it comes to setting standards for beauty, there is no need for the two camps to unify their selections. Netizens, skewed towards the young and impulsive, can pick their choices while media elites can dispense their aesthetic wisdom. As a matter of fact, every demographic group can chip in and announce its own prototype. And people will know that beauty is multifaceted and ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

That said, I have a hunch why organizers decided to forgo the Supergirl winners. They have such regimented fan clubs that they can make a much bigger noise than their actual size suggests. In other words, they know exactly how to exploit the loopholes of a democratic system to catapult their picks onto the winning podium. From what I know, some of China's fan clubs have such organizational sophistication that, were they political groups, they'd all make the cover of Time magazine.

Now the question becomes complicated: Are these grassroots organizations a legitimate representation of public opinion, or are they distorting their demographics so much that everything has turned into a travesty? Should the media organizers totally disregard their voice or incorporate the reasonable part of it?

Theoretically, in the Internet age, public voices can be more easily heard. But the dynamics are not as simple as people imagined.

Email: raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/28/2007 page4)