Thursday, January 30, 2025

Beauty Contests for Camels

You're not the only one that was surprised about the existence of such a thing, and I hope I wasn't the only one to laugh a little bit about it. It makes sense though. Camels are extremely important to a lot of people in Africa and the Middle East, their lives depended on having a healthy and well cared for animal, and it would be a mark of wealth to have a camel that is well taken care of, since it takes time and supplies to take care of a camel and if you're able to do that, you obviously have enough luck to be able to survive happily. 

Enough about that. I can't actually back that up--it's just a guess from me. Back to the Camels. There is a celebration that centers around the camel pageant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) every year. It's in January/February and the winner of the contests get some seriously large prizes. 

Unlike human beauty pageants, the camels are split into a lot of categories-- 6 for age, and I think there are also categories based on the breed. In 2008, apparently there were over 350 rounds of judging, since there were over 1,800 camels entered. In 2017, there were over 30,000 camels entered. Those that rate well here can be sold for a lot of money, so even if you don't win, it can be very profitable to try your hand. Those that win though, they get around 5 million dollar prizes for the first in any category. 

This is from AP News and is a picture of one of the winners. Meet one of the most beautiful camels in the world. I disagree slightly because the neck seems a bit thin to me, but what do I know? I'll leave this to the masters. 

Like a lot of people, I actually found out about this pageant because 40 camels were disqualified for having been given Botox. Some also got kicked out because their owners gave them lip filler or other cosmetic enhancements. Since the camels were judged by their coat, neck, head, and hump, any enhancements weren't allowed. My main amusement here is that they are rated on their eyelashes and pouts, like a normal beauty pageant. I'm not sure if they get more objectified because they're rated purely on appearance instead of the human pageants that supposedly care about how their contestants act, their minds, and what they can do. Either way, I'm not going to be part of either. 

I hope you're as amused by this as I was. For more information, there are links below, or you can google for more. I'll warn you though, most of what I could find that was in English was about the cheating, since that brought it to the attention of a lot more people in the Western world, where English is more common. Either way, have fun. 




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