Camels kicked out of beauty pageant for using Botox, lose $66M prize
They were trying to embellish their lovely lady humps.
More than 40 camels were booted from a Saudi Arabian beauty pageant after getting administered Botox, hormones and other appearance enhancing techniques. This marks the biggest crackdown in the contest’s history.
“The club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels,” the Saudi Press Agency said of the dromedary disqualification which occurred at the annual Abdulaziz Camel Festival, near Riyadh, where breeders compete for nearly $66 million in prize money, the Washington Post reported. The camels are judged on the shape of their heads, necks, humps, dress and postures — think the camel equivalent of the Westminster dog show.
In order to enhance their camels’ countenance, dozens of breeders had reportedly stretched out the lips and noses, pumped the dromedary’s muscles full of hormones and tried to make their heads bigger with Botox — a substance that has been banned from camel competitions due to past infractions. Other verboten measures included inflating body parts with rubber bands and using fillers to relax their faces.
Not only were these cosmetic hacks unfair to competitors, but they could potentially injure the animals. One gruesome clip from August shows how one camel ruptured its lips after getting injected with Botox for another beauty contest.
The crackdown comes as pageant judges ramp up their camel-tampering detection techniques, which include employing “advanced” technology to bust cheaters, according to WaPo.
The beauty pageant is part of a monthlong royal camel festival, which features camel races, a petting zoo with the world’s tallest and shortest camels, museums and other camel-related pursuits featuring thousands of these desert-dwelling beasts. The bash, which is attended by hundreds of thousands of Saudis, even boasts a planetarium showcasing how Arab camel riders navigated the desert by following the stars, the Daily Mail reported.
While seemingly bizarre, the event aims to preserve the Bedouin camel-breeding tradition — a multimillion-dollar industry — amid Saudi Arabia’s oil-fueled modernization campaign.
This isn’t the first time the pageant has busted a camel breeder for employing banned beautification techniques. A dozen beasts were disqualified in 2018 after handlers used Botox to make them more handsome.
