Man disguises himself as a female model, reaches beauty contest final

ASTANA: A beauty contest finalist in Kazakhstan made a startling revelation to the organizers that he is actually a ‘man’ disguised as woman throughout the competition.

22-year-old Ilay Dyagilev, 22, fooled organisers by posing as Alina Alieva, defeating 4,000 applicants to the last stage of the competition.

According to him: ‘My friends and I, we had a debate on beauty, and I decided to take part in the pageant. I’ve always been a champion of natural beauty.

‘You can see that many young women look identical, the same make-up, the same style – and they believe that they are beautiful if they follow trends. I don’t think so.’

But he decided to tell the organisers of Miss Virtual Kazakhstan that they had been conned, as had online voters from all over the country.

‘I came through to the finale and decided to expose the identity of Arina Alieva when I realised it had gone too far.

‘At the very beginning there were around 4,000 applications from across Kazakhstan, but I got to the final,’ he said.

The organisers said they were ‘shocked’ by the revelation of the man.

Ilay’s confession finally dislodged him from the contest race and he was replaced by 18-year-old Aikerim Temirkhanova. She had scored 1975 votes in the semi final compared to 2012 for the fake Arina Alieva.