Beautiful face grows rice

Author: Lu Junqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: In the 1970s, there was a North Korean film called A Village Blooming with Flowers, where an elderly man chose a girl for his son. The girl was not conventionally beautiful but had a sturdy figure and was capable of earning "600 work points" per year. The son disliked her looks, and the old man asked, "Can pretty faces grow rice?" In an era where work points were earned through physical labor, pretty faces indeed couldn't compete with a strong body. But times have changed. Beauties now rule the roost, vying for attention and becoming the absolute protagonists in the "attention economy." Pretty faces not only "grow rice" but also "grow money." According to a recent evaluation by international media, the global influence of the Miss World competition alone, along with the value it adds to the host city and regional brand, is equivalent to $4.4 billion...