SINGAPORE - Hers was a classic ugly duckling fairy tale.

At 10 years old, Lynn Tan was a chubby child and often mistaken for a boy.

Fast forward more than a decade and the former Raffles Junior College student is Miss Universe Singapore (MUS).

It has barely been a week since her win and the beauty queen is still reeling with happiness. Every morning when she wakes up and every night before she sleeps, she puts on her crown and sashes and admires herself in the mirror.

It's her way of reminding herself of how far she has come since her early days as that chubby kid. Miss Tan, 24, an associate with accounting firm Deloitte, said: "I love it. I wake up in the morning thinking that my crown is so beautiful and I'm so lucky."

She used to polish off 27 pieces of Ferrero Rocher at one go. That was when she was a member of St Nicholas Girls' Primary School's Trim and Fit (TAF) club and was in her own words, "very unattractive".

Recalling her transformation, Miss Tan said: "My mum used to send me for swimming lessons when I was young. I was very tanned and not attractive at all. I learnt to appreciate my tan only much later."

She also sported "a thick fringe and wore glasses", and tipped the scales at 58kg when she was 12 years old.

"People didn't pick on me, but they used to mistake me for a boy.

"I gradually lost the weight when I ran 2.4km every morning for a month when I entered my teens. I now weigh 50kg.

"Although I still have tan skin, I think it will stand me in good stead at the international finals (in December) as I feel that the Caucasian judges would like the tan look."

She said her parents are Chinese, but she has often been asked by strangers if she is of mixed descent.

At the Miss Universe Singapore final on Sunday night at the Shangri-La Hotel, Miss Tan also won three subsidiary awards - Miss Body Beautiful, Miss Lumiere International 2012 and Miss Sensational Smile.

She will represent the Republic at the Miss Universe pageant in an as-yet-confirmed country in December.

She was called the "perfect contestant" by judge and MUS chief executive officer Errol Pang, who said she has the ideal combination of beauty and brains.

She was a member of the debate team and the badminton team at St Nicholas Girls' Secondary School and she scored an impressive 7 points for her O levels.

Miss Tan, whose vital statistics are 34-25-35, also impressed the nine judges at the final when she quoted Mother Teresa after she got into the Top 7.

Read the full story here.

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