VietNamNet Bridge – The port city of Hai Phong has many beauties and it is known as the home to the first beauty training class in Vietnam.
This class is hosted by the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Friendship Palace and it is one of the first addresses in Vietnam where trains models and beauties.

The city of beauties

Many Hai Phong native girls are the winners at national beauty contests in Vietnam, such as Miss Vietnam 2002 Mai Phuong, Miss Vietnam 2004 Nguyen Thi Huyen, first runn-up of Miss Sea 2007 pageant Nguyen Phuong Thao and first runner-up of Miss Vietnam 2000 pageant Ngoc Oanh.

At the Miss Vietnam 2000 pageant, over half of the finalists were girls from Hai Phong. Many Hai Phong girls are also crowned at local beauty pageants. Most recently, Hai Phong’s Vuong Thu Phuong won the Gold Cup of the Vietnam Supermodel 2011.

Nobody has tried to explain why the northern port city has so many beauties but coach Dinh Hong Son, a senior official of the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Friendship Palace said that the most important factor is Hai Phong’s girls and their families are aware of their beauty very early and they invest to train themselves to make their beauty shine.

Hai Phong currently has two addresses where have model and beauty training classes: the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Friendship Palace and the Hai Phong Youth Culture and Sports Palace. Trainees of these classes are school girls who are at least 1.70m high, who come to learn and practice skills of models and beauty queens.
However the first address is more prestigious since it is the first place in Vietnam offering such training courses and many of its trainees have been crowned at beauty contests, including Miss Vietnam 2002 Mai Phuong, Miss Vietnam 2004 Nguyen Thi Huyen, Miss Sports 2007 Tran Thi Quynh, Miss Sea 1999 Hoang Nhat Mai, the second-runner up of Miss Vietnam 2000 Nguyen Ngoc Oanh, the second runner-up of Miss Sea 2007 Nguyen Phuong Thao, Miss Hai Phong 2006 Nguyen Ngoc Anh, etc.

Some supermodels were also trained there, such as supermodel Binh Minh, the Gold and Silver Prize winners of the Vietnam Supermodel 2011 Vu Manh Hiep and Le Kien Dinh, etc.

Son said that this class always has around 30 trainees aging from 7 to 18 who want to become models, to participate in future beauty pageants or to become more charming. She said that in the modern society, many people see beauty is an important factor to be successful. Many mothers take their little daughters to this class twice a week.

How girls are trained?

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening at 8pm, girls group up at the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Palace to practice for over one hour with their coach – Dinh Hong Son. Since beauty contests boom in Vietnam and modeling has become an attractive job, young, pretty girls have flocked to this address.

What do they learn from the class? They learn how to walk, how to stand and how to show their feeling in a right way.

The first lesson that Tran Hai My, 17, an 11th-grade student from Thai Phien High School, Hai Phong and other classmates have to learn is fundamental knowledge on walking, standing, posing and showing feeling on their faces and through their appearance.

Many people, especially youth, often visit this class to see Hai Phong’s living beauties and models.

Coach Dinh Hong Son said that walking is not simple as people thought. Some girls have to practice this skill for three months.

Tran Mai Phuong, 21, 1.72m, from Kien An district, the eldest trainee in this class, said that she has attended this class for four years and she dreams of becoming a professional model. “I’ve learned a lot of experience and skills from this class,” Phuong said.

In this class, the coach carefully guides girls to keep each of their steps at standard. Though all trainees are tall, at least 1.70m, but not all of them move nicely.

Coach Son said that her curriculum includes two parts: practicing walking, standing, posing, showing feeling and doing aerobic exercises to have good shape.

“Nobody is perfect at birth. The beauties you see everyday on newspapers look shining but they have to practice very hard to maintain their shape,” Son said.

In Hai Phong, Son, an aerobic instructor, is the most reputed for training ‘potential’ girls into beauty queens. Practice, practice and practice is what she told her trainees.

She said her secret is very simple: using aerobic as an effective method to improve physical weakness of girls. Son said that some current beauty queens were not perfect at the beginning but thanks to appropriate aerobic lessons, their forms are very nice now.

Though this class is widely known as a ‘beauty training center’ but it actually works unprofessionally. Trainees can come and go very easily and they are only trained with catwalk, posing skills and aerobic lessons.

This class cannot compare with beauty training centers in Venezuela or Japan, where trainees learn how to behave smartly and professionally.

Long-legged girls and baron’s trap

Beauty pageants have become a good chance for girls to change their lives because they will become famous and get rich if they win any title. As a result, beauty contest attracts thousands of girls and many ‘beauty training centers’ have opened.

In 2006, over 3,000 girls registered for Miss Vietnam pageant. The number did not change much in 2008 and 2010. The just-finish Miss Vietnam Ethnic 2011 drew more than 1,000 girls of 42 ethnic groups in Vietnam.

Miss Vietnam World, Miss Tourism, dozens of other beauty contests at all levels and model seeking contests also attracted thousands of young girls.

Even men are eager for participating in model contests. Nearly 5,000 young men registered for a teen model contest of a TV channel in 2009.

Catching the trend, some modeling training firms have invested in seeking potential candidates to train for beauty contests. Besides the first address – the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Friendship Palace in Hai Phong – Hanoi also has reputed addresses like New Talent modeling company, where trained Miss Vietnam 2008 Mai Phuong Thuy and Miss Vietnam 2010 Ngoc Han and Venus modeling company, where trained the first runner-up of Miss Vietnam 2010 Dang Thuy Trang.

New Talent is now training some girls for the Miss Vietnam 2012 pageant. However, the firm director Le Quang Tu refused to disclose any information.

However, a manager from Venus said that beauty training at modeling firms is very simple. Trainees are only provided with catwalk, posing and feeling show skills. These centers do not have specific curricula nor strategies.

In HCM City, a specialized school to train beauties, models opened in 2007. This training course gives trainees necessary knowledge on taking care of their physical beauty, improving their manners, make-up skills, accents, etc.

However, beauty is not enough to become a beauty queen.

Of dozens of beautiful girls attending the beauty training class at the Vietnam-Czech Cultural Friendship Palace in Hai Phong, Coach Dinh Hong Son said that she could choose one or two to provide special training to attend beauty pageants.

Son’s top criterion is a beautiful face, followed by a good body, good knowledge and behavior skill. Son selected only two girls to practice for the Miss Vietnam Ethnic 2011 and one of them was crowned the first runner-up – Pham Thanh Tuyen.

Though who have good knowledge of the showbiz world said that once girls win prizes at beauty pageants, they will have many opportunities to get advertising contracts, to attend paid events and other invisible opportunities.

Coach Son said that young girls’ desire to become beauty queens is good but they will easily ‘slip and fall’ in virtual halo. She said beautiful girls often fall into rich men’s traps to become their ‘toys.’

She said that her enthusiasm in training beautiful girls for pageants is going down because current beauty contests are influenced by hidden and unhealthy factors.

Ngoc Anh