[HN Gopher] Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebra...
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Camel beauty contests take center stage at a celebration of Bedouin
culture
Author : Thevet
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-11-30 05:23 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| webmobdev wrote:
| 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...
| mbg721 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| ggm wrote:
| 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.
| tsol wrote:
| Makes sense, in America there are dog shows for their beloved
| dogs. Horse shows for horses. Why not have camel shows?
| GordonS wrote:
| 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.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Every state-fair in the US has something like this, usually
| massively tongue-in-cheek.
| GordonS wrote:
| The ones here are very much _not_ tongue in cheek - folk
| take them very seriously!
| Taniwha wrote:
| Yeah I'm sure animal shows happen in rural communities the
| world over
| motohagiography wrote:
| 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.
| tehchromic wrote:
| 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.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| the issue is that it implies that Bedouins have relations
| with their camels. It's a common slur towards desert nomads
| & arabs.
| mbg721 wrote:
| cf. Wales and sheep,
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| See also the age old proverb applied to anything is
| highly male:
|
| "the men are men the women are men and the sheep are
| scared"
| h2odragon wrote:
| 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.
| mbg721 wrote:
| They didn't kick you out for the lingerie, they kicked you
| out for pronouncing it "dressage" instead of
| "dressahhhhjjjjj".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >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.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| Avshalom wrote:
| A fun scandal from a few years ago
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580228837...
| rpmisms wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| rpmisms wrote:
| We call them Dog Shows, why would this not be a Camel Show?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Different languages have different colloquialisms.
| solohan wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-11-30 23:02 UTC)