A Dozen Camels Were Disqualified from a Beauty Contest Because of Botox and We Have So Many Questions
Forget the Grammy’s or the Golden Globes—we can’t stop talking about the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in Saudi Arabia (i.e. the Oscars of camel festivals). Yes, there is a beauty contest for camels and it is rife with controversy.
According to The National, 12 camel contestants have been disqualified from the festival for being injected with Botox. Apparently, a vet was caught red-handed giving the camels cosmetic surgery, which goes against the competition’s rules (“[i]n case of fraud to change the natural form of participating camels, the participant shall be excluded immediately”).
Why (dear God, why) would someone do this, you ask? Well, this is no small town beauty pageant we’re talking about here—there’s a whopping $57 million at stake and thousands of camels are taking part in the festival. Yep, pretty un-humping believable.
“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips, and even the jaw,” Ali al-Mazrouei, son of one of the United Arab Emirates’ top camel breeders, told the paper. “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.’” (And you thought thigh-high Uggs were confusing.)
While the 12 camels in question are no longer allowed to participate in the month-long festival, there are still around 30,000 others that have a change to take home some of that ludicrous prize money.
TL; DR: You may be able to get love drunk off my humps but under no circumstances, should you ever give them botox.
