Some people say an air of mystery suits the perfect woman, or that might have been the logic that Miss Uzbekistan had thought of, since beauty pageants do look for the perfect woman.

Rakhima Ganieva, 18, from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is the first from her country to ever join Miss World. She passes all the beauty queen standards: brains, beauty-she is set to go to college, wants to become a lawyer, loves tennis, plays the piano, reads the foremost Russian authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov...the only problem is, that she doesn't even seem to exist.

Officially, that is.

Baffled officials from the Uzbek Culture and Sports Ministry and the National Committee of Women have finally announced, after thoroughly combing records for their country's representative in the pageant, that the woman calling herself Miss Uzbekistan, is an impostor. Uzbekistan, a predominantly Islamic country, does not even hold a Miss Uzbekistan Pageant, therefore could not have produced any representatives to Miss World. Some records however, do indicate that she had been at a time, represented by Uzbekistan modelling agency Pro Models, but reps from the agency have said that there had been no screening process to pick a contestant for the pageant, and "if there had been...a much more beautiful model would have been chosen."

Ganieva had supposedly been crowned Miss Uzbekistan on July 20, but there are no video or photographic footage of the event. Nobody seems to know exactly who she is, and how she even got as far as Indonesia.  

Miss Uzbekistan, however, seems to be deliberately oblivious to the scandal her mystery is causing. Her Facebook page contains only pictures of the pageant, pictures of her posing with the other contestants, and cheerful status updates and well-wishes. Neither she, or Miss World Officials could be reached for comment, leaving the rest of the world tuned in to the finals on September 28.