Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebration of Bedouin culture
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That being said, there is something very cool about appreciating the grace and power of a traditionally ugly beast of burden.
It's not "Beauty contests for an animal? This unusual cultural event comes to us from.." or something
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.
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.
"the men are men the women are men and the sheep are scared"
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.
One of the ways to be racist and put down other cultures is exoticism, make the culture feel more dissimilar than it is. They are increasing the sense of “otherness” and de-emphasizing commonality (the camel show has more in common with dog and horse shows than with beauty pageants)
The title definitely is doing that and as you said, doing it for clicks which makes it all the more risible.
(1) https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/10/india-pushkar-c... (2) https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/decline-in...
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.
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.