12 Camels Eliminated From ‘Miss Camel’ Pageant in Saudi Arabia for Using Botox

Saudi men might keep their women covered head-to-toe, but their camels are a different story.

Camel breeding is a national pastime in Saudi Arabia. And nothing more honorable than having one’s prize animal win the highly convicted title of ‘Miss Camel’.

At this year’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, however, all chaos broke out when it was discovered what some vets and owners were doing to their animals.

Some pageant contestants hit a hump in the road this week. That is, a camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia disqualified a dozen camels for receiving Botox injections to make them more attractive.

Saudi media reported that a veterinarian was caught performing plastic surgery on the camels a few days before the pageant, according to UAE’s The National. In addition to the injections, the clinic was surgically reducing the size of the animals’ ears to make them appear more delicate.

Ali Al Mazrouei explains how important a camel’s looks are to Saudi Men.

“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali Al Mazrouei, a regular at such festivals and the son of a prominent Emirati breeder, told the newspaper. “It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it’s like, ‘Oh look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose.’ “

Camel owners even go to the effort of personally massaging their pageant camel’s lips to increase the desirability of the camel’s face.

“For example they start to pull the lips of the camel, they pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer,” he explained to the newspaper. “Secondly, they use hormones to make it more muscular and Botox makes the head bigger and bigger. Everyone wants to be a winner.”

There are many factors that go into what makes an “attractive camel” to enthusiastic Saudi men. But one thing is clear, a “leathery mouth” with ” wide lips” is non-negotiable.

The festival provides a number of informative graphics about camels, including a diagram titled Standards of Camel Beauty. It is sadly unspecific about what makes for handsome nostrils and withers, though it does mention a “leathery mouth.”

The rights of women might be virtually non-existent in the Muslim country of Saudi Arabia. But it sure is good to know Sharia Law protects the rights of supermodel camels.

Camel owners must not only show each camel with “untouched natural beauty” but also swear that the age and ownership of the camel is accurate.

The tall, elegant competitors in the beauty pageant have drawn thousands of spectators from around the world, all gathered to gaze at their “untouched natural beauty.”

Sure they might implant these “beauties” with microchips so they can never escape their master’s watchful eye.

Teams of vets are enlisted to monitor the health of the camels – they insert a microchip into each to keep track of the camel throughout the competition and to collect valuable data, surveys, and research on camels across the region.

But again they still have it better than women.

Look how much skin this camel is showing here!

Yet in all seriousness, this is an important competition to the Saudi people and their neighboring friends.

The beauty contest, launched in 2000, is a centerpiece of the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival. Last year, authorities moved the festival from a remote location in the desert to a site an hour and a half from Riyadh, and this year attendance has increased by a third, according to Reuters.

Real money is at stake: About $57 million is awarded to winners of the contests and camel races, The National reports, with more than $31.8 million in prizes for just the pageants.

“The camel,” the chief judge of the show, Fawzan al-Madi, told the newswire, “is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.” 

What a culture.

Source: NPR, The Spec

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