Animal Botox

Wonderful news has reached us from the Middle East. Twenty camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest, the 2026 Camel Beauty Festival, held in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The animals, who were probably participating unwittingly, and whose gender is unknown, had been "touched up" with Botox to make them more attractive.

We shouldn't be scandalized; on the contrary. In dog beauty contests, the dogs (who also haven't signed any consent forms) are perfumed, have their ears or tails cropped, and their fur curled. And it seems to me that this isn't very different, of course, from what was done in Japan: binding women's feet from a young age to prevent them from growing, because small feet, it turns out (we all remember the story of Cinderella), are attractive because they are fragile. Nor is it very different from what is done—I don't know if it still happens—to women of the Burmese Padaung ethnic group, which is to put rings in their necks from the age of five, to deform their collarbones and make them show off a long neck, which is considered elegant, like those of swans (we all remember the story of the little duckling).

I find it quite stimulating that in this part of the Middle East, where women are covered from head to toe and couldn't participate in a beauty pageant (or even a word association contest), they hold beauty pageants for camels and stretchers and get Botox injections in their lips. I think that if they have to exchange you for a few camels as a dowry, at least they should be touched up, because it shows on them.