Saudi Arabian camel beauty contest is one of the unordinary ones, the month-long festival is the biggest in the Gulf and involves up 30,000 camels. This year, 12 camels have been disqualified from annual beauty event after receiving Botox injections to make their pouts look more alluring.
Saudi capital authorities welcome the annual camel beauty contest, which has have raised its profile after the relocating it from the desert to the Riyadh’s outskirts. Unfortunately, the animal beauty event has started with the botox scandal, a dozen camels were banned after a vet was caught performing plastic surgery on them. Camels were also given Botox-type injections at his clinic.
The beauty contest’s prize money 20m Saudi riyals (£3.7m) for each category tempted some owners to cheat, said Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of an Emirati camel breeder, told the UAE daily the National.
“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw. 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,’”
he said and added that the key attributes in camel beauty are considered to be delicate ears and big nose. But there are strict rules against the use of drugs in the lips, moreover, shaved or clipped body parts of camels also prohibited.
After the ban was imposed, the chief judge of the show, Fawzan al-Madi, reminded that using drugs or other unnatural improvements to win the camel beauty contest is a cheat:
“The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”
