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Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebration of Bedouin culture
- tsol 5y agoMakes sense, in America there are dog shows for their beloved dogs. Horse shows for horses. Why not have camel shows?
- GordonS 5y agoYep, 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.
- motohagiography 5y agoI'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 5y agoThey falsely advertise such shows here too: bring your fancy custom matched lingerie to a "Horse Dressage" event and they'll kick you both out.
- mbg721 5y agoThey didn't kick you out for the lingerie, they kicked you out for pronouncing it "dressage" instead of "dressahhhhjjjjj".
- tehchromic 5y agoI 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.
- hydrok9 5y agothe issue is that it implies that Bedouins have relations with their camels. It's a common slur towards desert nomads & arabs.
- mbg721 5y agocf. Wales and sheep,
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoSee also the age old proverb applied to anything is highly male: "the men are men the women are men and the sheep are scared"
- rpmisms 5y agoBad 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 5y agoWhat'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
- aaron695 5y agoI assume it's a translation error back in 1420 AH (2000 AD which is kinda pre-internet) by the King. He misunderstood how it's done in the West when naming it in Arabic. Arabic wiki and UAE media also call it beauty - https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%86_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83_%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%B2_%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%A8%D9%84 https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%AC%D8%A7... The fact these articles don't address the issue is the problem. For instance, when we show our goats, which are pets to us, we won't cut back their hair, because the hair to us is what we want in a pet, but to a breeder you need to see muscular and udder definitions etc on show. The breeders think we are strange/not that serious. When they botox the camels is it about the camel as a machine or the camel as a companion. Perhaps it's a similar arguments about is it "Allah" or "God" in the Koran. Here there is a bit of sniggering going on, but perhaps the Arabs own it. Child beauty pageant are a thing in the US which is owned.
- mbg721 5y 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 5y agoVOX is very guilty of this. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VKWLC87Uzw&ab_channel=VICE 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 5y agoCamels 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-camel-fair-rajasthan-covid https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/10/india-pushkar-c... (2) https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/decline-india-camel-population-worrying-7639965/ https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/decline-in...
- ggm 5y agoAustralia 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 5y agoWow, 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.
- ggm 5y agoI 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 5y agoA fun scandal from a few years ago https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580228837/a-dozen-camels-disqualified-from-saudi-beauty-pageant-over-botox-injections https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580228837...