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You know you might be running out of things to be outraged about when a girl without makeup makes you lose your mind.

Recently, a ballet dancer from Denmark made waves in China when she appeared on a talent show to perform an interpretation of the classic fairy tale, The Ugly Duckling. So captivating was the girl’s beauty that apparently the cameramen filming the performance just couldn’t help but focus on her from start to finish.

The already-rapt Chinese Interweb users apparently couldn’t get enough of the girl’s beauty, which led to frantic, borderline-stalker web searches for more of her pictures. Eventually, users then stumbled across photos of her sans-makeup on her personal Instagram page and the Chinese Internet promptly exploded.

Disbelieving Netizens all over Asia collectively rubbed their eyes, blinked, possibly did a spit take, rubbed their eyes again and then furiously commenced to commenting:

“Is this… Really the same person?!”

“Makeup is such a magical substance.”

“My angel has become… something else…”

“When she wears makeup, she’s an angel. When she’s without makeup, she’s insanely cute.”

Here’s video of her television performance, which starts at around the 59-minute mark.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I’ve been vocal about my dislike of Asia’s tendency to objectify women as sexual objects, so I’m sadly both unsurprised and disappointed with Asian Internet users’ breathless reaction to a woman who *gasp* chooses not to wear makeup sometimes, but I’m glad that many commenters at least seemed to find our heroine genuinely attractive both with and without cosmetics.

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However, somewhat creepily, the girl – who I gather is named Sidsel Rasmussen – logged a crazy spike in Instagram followers after her Chinese television appearance, going from an undisclosed low number to nearly 200,000 in under a week.

Sidsel may be the first white girl to take one of China’s coveted “Hot Girl Doing Things” awards, which we guess is a significant achievement, but we know there’s more to her than that. Here’s hoping her newfound Internet fame translates into real-world success for Sidsel.
[ Read in Japanese ]