When Camels Get Botox: The Beauty Scandal Nobody Saw Coming
I have been a skin therapist for five years. I have seen a lot. But nothing - and I mean nothing - prepared me for the news that camels are now getting Botox to win beauty pageants.
I wish I were making this up.
In February 2026, the Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al Musanaa, Oman, was rocked by a cheating scandal when 20 camels were disqualified after veterinary inspectors discovered they had undergone cosmetic enhancements. And we are not talking a sneaky bit of hairspray and a good angle. Hyaluronic acid injections were used to plump lips. Dermal fillers and silicone were applied to refine nasal profiles. Botox softened facial features. Some camels were even given hormones to enhance muscle tone, while silicone wax was used to inflate humps.
Hump inflation. Let that land for a moment.
This is not the first time the camel beauty pageant world has been rocked by scandal. In 2021, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival ended in uproar when more than 40 camels were ejected for aesthetic manipulation. It is a pattern. Pressure, prize money, perceived shortcuts, and the slow erosion of what was actually beautiful about the thing in the first place.
Sound familiar?
Here is what actually gets me.
These competitions exist to celebrate something natural. Judges evaluate symmetry, head and neck shape, lip and nose form, coat condition, and overall bearing, with an emphasis on unaltered characteristics. The whole point is the real thing. The pedigree. The genetics. The animal in front of you, as nature made it.
The moment you start injecting it, you are no longer celebrating the camel. You are celebrating the needle.
And here is what the headlines are glossing over in favour of the jokes: veterinary experts warn that cosmetic procedures on camels can inflict serious harm, with reported complications including infections, swelling, tissue damage, chronic inflammation, severe pain, bruising and scarring. Botox may interfere with essential muscle function - including eating and chewing.
The very thing injected to make them look better is quietly making them worse. Atrophying the muscles underneath. Compromising the function of a face that was built to do more than just look a certain way.
I talk about this with my clients all the time.
When you put a cast on your arm for six weeks, the muscle underneath wastes away. Not because anything went wrong. Because muscles need to move to stay strong.
Botox works the same way. It freezes the muscle. Over time, with repeated use, that muscle shrinks. The structure beneath your skin starts to lose its scaffolding. And then you need more product to fill the space the muscle used to hold.
It is not a beauty treatment. It is a cycle.
The camels found this out the hard way.
And yet - here is the part that actually gave me hope.
As gobsmacked as I am that we live in a world where camels need Botox audits, I am genuinely relieved by how this was handled. Festival organisers issued a firm response, stating they are “keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels” - and promised strict penalties for those responsible. Judges implemented sophisticated detection technology: all contestants now undergo rigorous inspection including X-rays and comprehensive tests to identify any artificial enhancements.
They looked at what was happening to these animals, called it what it was, and said: not here, not on our watch.
That is not a small thing. In a world that has largely normalised injectable culture - where freezing your face is a Tuesday appointment and nobody bats an eyelid - there is something quietly radical about an institution standing up and saying the natural version is the standard. That the real thing has value. That manipulation, however sophisticated, is still manipulation.
I wish we applied that same energy to human beauty standards more often.
Because the conversation we need to be having - the one I have with women every single day in my treatment room - is not whether injectables are cheating. It is whether we have been so conditioned to see a frozen, filler-smoothed face as normal that we have forgotten what our faces were actually built to do.
What I do instead.
At Glo Younger, I am building something different. A practice grounded in corneotherapy, in microcurrent that actually trains your facial muscles the way a gym trains your body, in technology that works with your skin’s biology rather than against it. Results that compound over time rather than collapse when you stop.
My clients are not chasing frozen. They are chasing vital. Lifted. Themselves - just more so.
No needles. No atrophy. No hump inflation.
Questions I get asked a lot
Does Botox actually cause muscle atrophy?
Yes. Botox works by temporarily paralysing the injected muscle. With repeated use over time, the muscle can shrink from disuse - the same way a limb in a cast loses mass. This is why many long-term Botox users find they need increasing amounts of filler to replace the volume the muscle once provided.
What are the natural alternatives to Botox in Perth?
At Glo Younger in Perth, we offer corneotherapy-based treatments, microcurrent facials that tone and train facial muscles, LED therapy, plasma fibroblast, microneedling and biomimetic peels - all designed to build genuine skin health and structural support without injectables.
What is corneotherapy and why does it matter?
Corneotherapy is an evidence-based approach that focuses on restoring and maintaining the skin’s barrier function. Rather than treating surface symptoms, it addresses the root causes of skin dysfunction - leading to long-term improvements in skin health, resilience and appearance.
Ready to build your facelift-free future?
If you are ready to invest in your skin in a way that will serve you for decades - not just seasons - I would love to hear from you.