I'm sure it's just a stereotype. I'm sure that there are many
lovely Arab women. And I'm sure that Arab men treasure their
beautiful wives.
But then again, stereotypes don't just materialize from nowhere...
"Saudi tribe holds camel beauty pageant"
http://www.reuters.com/
"Contestants
in this Saudi-style beauty pageant have all the features you might
expect anywhere else in the world, but with one crucial difference --
the competitors are camels.
This week, the Qahtani tribe of
western Saudi Arabia has been welcoming entrants to its Mazayen al-Ibl
competition, a parade of the "most beautiful camels" in the desolate
desert region of Guwei'iyya, 120 km (75 miles) west of Riyadh.
...
While
tremendous oil wealth has brought rapid modernization to the desert
state of Saudi Arabia, the camel remains celebrated as a symbol of the
traditional nomadic lifestyle of Bedouin Arabs."
We've got just one question for ya, Mohammad - one hump or two?
A
little north of there in Russia, they've got another spin on the
pageant idea. And I mean 'spin' as in one of the properties of
subatomic particles...
"Female employees from Russia's nuclear energy industry are competing for the Miss Atom 2009 title"
http://www.spiegel.de/"Imagine,
if you will, a bikini clad beauty queen strutting out of lake, with
giant cooling towers belonging to a nuclear power facility dominating
the background. Odd perhaps? Not, apparently, in Russia. There, women
working in the country's nuclear industry compete for the annual title
of Miss Atom.
The beauty pageant, now in its sixth year, is
generously financed and well established. There are no anti-nuclear
protestors who show up to sling rotten tomatoes at the contestants.
Instead, it seems that this bold strategy of fusing atomic energy and
Russian bombshells is just another part of life -- or at least a
marvelous ploy.
"We want to show the general public that the
nuclear industry is an industry like any other," Ilya Platonov, who
heads up Nuclear.Ru which runs the event, told ABC News. "Ordinary
people work in it, including young, attractive women.""
Official site:
http://miss2009.nuclear.ru/I
think they're on the right track. The photo album certain has my
Geiger counter clicking, and there are _no_ signs of decay.
http://www.mosnews.com/gallery/288.phtml
