Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebration of Bedouin culture

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/travel/camel-beauty-pageant.html

by Thevet • 5 years ago

39 27 5 years ago

tsol• 5 years ago

Makes sense, in America there are dog shows for their beloved dogs. Horse shows for horses. Why not have camel shows?

GordonS2• 5 years ago

Yep, doesn't seem particularly unusual to me; here in rural Scotland, farmers and their families show all kinds of animals, in what are essentially beauty contests, including sheep, goats, cows, horses and chickens.

Taniwha• 5 years ago

Yeah I'm sure animal shows happen in rural communities the world over

mbg7214• 5 years ago

Every state-fair in the US has something like this, usually massively tongue-in-cheek.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

I'd go so far as to say characterizing camel sports and shows as beauty contests, a phrase that implies "women" to pretty much every english speaker, is probably the most farcically and unselfconciously racist thing I have read in an edited publication. Horse versions of events like these around the world are a huge part of rural culture and economies. The festivals (Golega, Portugal, Seville, Spain, Verden, Germany, Calgary, Canada, even Palm Beach, USA etc.) draw millions of dollars to local economies and provide livelihoods for generations of people.

For all their concern, exotic'izing Bedouin culture and implying racist tropes about their relationships to camels and women, I wouldn't be surprised if the Times pulled the article, as it's hard not to read it as risably offensive.

h2odragon• 5 years ago

They falsely advertise such shows here too: bring your fancy custom matched lingerie to a "Horse Dressage" event and they'll kick you both out.

tehchromic• 5 years ago

I suppose as someone interested in cancel culture I would wonder respectfully why there's anything wrong with celebrating beauty as a feminine attribute, or with comparing a beautiful camel to a beautiful woman, (if in fact that's what was done)?

True, males have been traditionally denied the status of "beauty" in more traditional cultural arenas, and yes, many unfair prejidices towards domesticated animals exist such that their comparison to a human is assumed to be derogatory. However why let a few bad apples spoil the bunch?

I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating beauty in all its forms and comparisons and I thoroughly enjoyed this article.

throwaway0a5e2• 5 years ago

I'd go so far as to say characterizing camel sports and shows as beauty contests, a phrase that implies "women" to pretty much every english speaker, is probably the most farcically and unselfconciously racist thing I have read in an edited publication.

Or they're just trying to distance it from dog shows and farm animal competitions like you see at state fairs because those are boring and well known and won't get western audiences to click.

Not everything is racist.

rpmisms3• 5 years ago

Bad title on NYT's part. The west has dog "beauty contests".

That being said, there is something very cool about appreciating the grace and power of a traditionally ugly beast of burden.

themitigating• 5 years ago

What's bad about the title? It's just saying this exists and it's part of their culture. In no way does it imply it's strange.

It's not "Beauty contests for an animal? This unusual cultural event comes to us from.." or something

rpmisms3• 5 years ago

We call them Dog Shows, why would this not be a Camel Show?

solohan• 5 years ago

I was confused as well. Perhaps they're referring to the actual title of the article on nytimes.com which is "Meet the Beauty Queens of Al Dhafra". I like the HN title better too.

mbg7214• 5 years ago

"In (x place) there are (y bizarre events)" articles tend to overstate the popularity of the event. Yes, there is a Sauerkraut Festival in Ohio, but no, sauerkraut isn't a huge American cultural phenomenon. This especially happens with articles about Japan.

cultofmetatron• 5 years ago

VOX is very guilty of this. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VKWLC87Uzw&ab_channel=VICE) had me convinced it was a mainstream normal thing. I spent several months in colombia and dated a colombiana. I never encountered anything of the sort being an actual thing. NOT accurate at all.

webmobdev• 5 years ago

Camels are a big deal in Rajasthan, India too - India’s famous Pushkar Camel Fair returns after COVID break (1), Decline in India’s camel population is worrying. I also remember reading in a foreign diplomat's biography on how he earned India some extra diplomatic brownie points in the middle-east by gifting some camels and offering to inseminate some of theirs artificially.

(1) https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/10/india-pushkar-c... (2) https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/decline-in...

ggm2• 5 years ago

Australia supplies a lot into this market. We have a huge population of feral camels roaming the central desert regions. Brought in as pack animals during the great expansion of the Victorian era.

Hundreds of thousands of them, roaming semi-free.

Serious amounts of money bid at auction for OZ Camels to fly back to the M.E.

pmdulaney• 5 years ago

Wow, I did not know that. It's kind of similar to the buffalo on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles (brought in for a movie shoot in the 1920's or thereabouts, I think), but as far as I know there is no export market for Catalina buffalo.

ggm2• 5 years ago

I was going to suggest mozzarella di bufo but I realised that you are referring to what we call bison here, because buffalo has two meanings. We also have feral buffalo (the non bison kind) that said, I've had bison burgers in Minneapolis so the meat is definitely valuable. Camel meat and camel milk are sold here in Oz, supply consistency is hard.

We make a lot of buffalo product btw. We export it.

The Web says Catalina island land management keep the herd down to about 150 animals to preserve both the island and the animals. A nice solution.

Feral animal management in Australia is a huge problem. Horses in the high country are destroying the land but are defended by some people and it's become vote winning politics across state boundaries.

Avshalom• 5 years ago

A fun scandal from a few years ago https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580228837...

Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebration of Bedouin culture

Related Stories