Page 13 - IAV Digital Magazine #454

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
A Dozen Camels Disqualified From Saudi Beauty Pageant Over Botox Injections
By Laurel Wamsley
Some pageant contestants hit a hump in the road this week. That is, a camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia disquali- fied a dozen camels for receiv- ing Botox injec- tions to make them more attrac- tive.
Saudi media reported that a veterinarian was caught performing plastic surgery on the camels a few days before the pageant, accord- ing to UAE's The National. In addi- tion to the injec- tions, the clinic was surgically reducing the size of the animals' ears to make them appear more delicate.
"They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw," Ali Al Mazrouei, a regu- lar at such festi- vals and the son of a prominent Emirati breeder, told the newspa-
per. "It makes the head more inflat- ed so when the camel comes it's like, 'Oh look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose.' "
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 festival pro- vides a number of informative graph- ics about
camels, including a
diagram titled Sta ndards of Camel Beauty. It is sadly unspecific about what makes for handsome nos- trils and withers, though it does mention a "leath- ery mouth."
Among regula- tions about the age, breeding and teething of the dromedaries, contest rules say "[i]n case of fraud to change the natural form of participating camels, the par- ticipant shall be excluded immedi- ately" — with vio- lators banned from this year's contest and the next five sessions
of the festival, along with possi- ble legal penalties for violating the kingdom's animal welfare laws.
Camel owner Ali Obaid told The National that cheaters will get creative to get an edge and will alter an animal's appearance for months before it's sold to a buyer.
"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."
The beauty con- test, launched in 2000, is a center- piece of the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival. Last year, authorities moved the festi- val from a remote location in the desert to a site an hour and a half from Riyadh, and this year atten- dance has increased by a third, according to Reuters.
"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."
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine