Beauty Contest's Winner: Camel
As if a beauty contest for camels wasn't enough, Botoxing the camels so their lips look pouty was, apparently, the need of the hour.
And no prizes for guessing where this contest is held. Of course, it had to be Saudi Arabia.
Saudis take this contest very seriously. It's held once a year: the camels walk, strut, and show off their faces for prizes running into millions of riyals. There are strict rules, and defying them brings serious consequences.
And like every contest, this one is filled with drama. People cheat and lie; camels undergo plastic surgery and Botox injections. The surgery is usually done to trim their large ears, the Botox to keep wrinkles at bay. In 2018, more than a dozen camels were disqualified from the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival after vets found evidence of Botox use.
The Saudi festival at Umm Rughaiba, northeast of Riyadh, has run since 2000 and is open to purebred Arabian camels — the "ships of the desert" the region has revered since time immemorial. (Arabic is famously said to have hundreds of words for camel.)
While the rest of the world may find it odd, for the participants it's a multimillion-riyal business and a serious point of pride.
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