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"  A documentary on &amp;quot;Extreme Beauty Queens&amp;quot; aired on British TV last night and oh boy did it live up to its name. Offering insight into the Miss Venezuela pageant, the filmmakers followed would-be winners and the lengths they&amp;#039;re prepared to go to for that sparkly tiara and the titular sash. In particular, Mayer (short for Wilmayerlin), a contestant who hopes success will offer her family a route out of the Caracas slums. Having previously failed in the pageant&amp;#039;s preliminary rounds, Mayer&amp;#039;s family saved up $10,000 to pay for breast augmentation and a nose job \u2014 and Mayer also had a plastic mesh sewn onto her tongue (pictured above), making it painful for her to eat solid foods and thus accelerate weight loss in preparation for the 2013 finals. Everybody make a shocked, uncomfortable face now. Because yeah, that&amp;#039;s crazy. Also, the &amp;quot;helpful&amp;quot; feedback that led Mayer and many other pageant hopefuls to undergo surgery (and crash-dieting and most likely other awful stuff too) came from Miss Venezuela president and all-around Venezuelan icon/waxwork Osmel Sousa. Who looks like this: Sousa told the documentary&amp;#039;s host, a British model, that she needs to fix her teeth, remove moles and facial blemishes, and dye her hair blonde. She was also told that, at 120 lbs, her weight was a problem. In scenes from a reality show featuring the contestants, one girl faints \u2014 apparently from the &amp;quot;extreme diet&amp;quot; she was on. Osmel comes to check on her, and offers words of bitchy pageant coach wisdom: &amp;quot;If you faint like a beauty queen, get up like one.&amp;quot; (To be fair, he does take some of his own advice, and is filmed for the same reality show getting surgery himself \u2014 on his smile.) Mayer makes the top 5 in the big pageant finale, despite stumbling in that pesky Q&amp;amp;amp;A round. By the way, this is Mayer:  And those all important measurements represent &amp;quot;mathematical perfection.&amp;quot; To her family&amp;#039;s delight, she&amp;#039;s eventually crowned the first runner-up title \u2014 which is, apparently, more than enough to secure modeling gigs and opportunities that will change her family&amp;#039;s life. Still though, does that make a tongue mesh sensible? p.s. Here&amp;#039;s one more GIF from the pageant, because yes please sexy blackbird feathery goodness:  \u00A0 Follow Alex on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/news/a19972/miss-venezuela-tongue-mesh-surgery-madness/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1440_43251629>