(Newsweek/Reuters) -- “The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia,” the chief judge of the show, Fawzan al-Madi, said as news that twelve camels were kicked out of the competition broke, Reuters reported. “We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”
With a prize money total of around $57 million, it is no surprise that around 30,000 camels have been entered in the show, but the month-long event has already run into controversy.
“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali al-Mazrouei, 31, whose father breeds camels, told the Emirates’ The National. “It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it’s like, ‘Oh look at how big is that head is. It has big lips, a big nose’.”
Around 300,000 people have reportedly attended the event that began at the start of the month and includes not only the beauty pageant but also camel racing and auctions for buyers and sellers. The possibility that a Botox-injected camel could win big money or go to a buyer for a high price, months before it returns to its regular appearance, has worried some attendees of the event, who want beauty pageant cheats to be punished just the same as giving performance-enhancing drugs to a racing camel is punished.
“The people who are just in the camel competition to make it more valuable, they are cheating everyone,” al-Mazourei added. “A fine should be applied. In camel racing, whoever is using drugs is fined about 50,000 Dirhams in Abu Dhabi. The fine is not yet applied for beauty camels.”