Camel Cuties

We humans are very conscious of appearances. We focus on looks and the outward show, when we gaze upon things—whether other people, animals, or architecture. People will go to great lengths to appear attractive—by buying expensive clothes, applying gobs of makeup, getting breast enhancement operations, going on extreme diets, etc. We hold beauty contests—for us humans, for our domestic animals, for our cars, for our gardens. You might say we're obsessed with good looks.

We claim to esteem various sayings that belie our fixation about appearances, such as “Beauty is only skin deep,” or “Don't judge a book by its cover,” but we really just pay lip service to these aphorisms. We pretend that character and substance matter, but it's the façade that we really value.

We place such high priority on good looks that we often cheat in our beauty contests. Numerous scandals have occurred over the years—not unlike the doping scandals that happen in sports. But now we have the worst beauty scandal of all: Saudi camel owners cheating in the annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival.
 
I have to admit, being an American, that I regard a camel as one of the more unsightly creatures around. But I wouldn't be surprised if a Saudi thought an American opossum or raccoon was ugly as sin. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and Saudis behold their camels as lovely.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is big business. Some 30,000 camels compete for over $30 million in prize money. That's a strong incentive to doll up your favorite dromedary to be as cute as possible—in fact, maybe even cross the moral line to try to dupe the judges by cheating.

Some of the beauty marks camel judges have traditionally looked for are tallness, a long neck, a big head and nose, dangling lips, and droopy ears. A fraudulent owner can't do much about his camel's height or neck length, but there are other devious means that some are resorting to. For example, some use Botox on their camel's face, which makes it appear more “inflated”, so it appears to have that desired bigger head, droopy lips, and an inflated nose. Some owners will tie down their camel's lips before the competition, so they dangle more, or inject their lips with anesthetic, to cause them to sag. They'll even coat the critter's ears with oil so they droop more, due to the added weight. What's next, silicon injections?

The Saudi judges are catching on to this nefarious form of misrepresentation, however. They are coming up with better monitoring schemes and penalties. Violators can be fined and banned for several years from competition. We can only hope that the Saudi authorities successfully check this pernicious behavior.
 
I find it hard to understand this phenomenon, since I find camels to be quite homely critters. But let me say no more about dromedary droopy lips or ears, lest I contribute further to the gap between Christians and Muslims.