If there’s anything greater than goats in pajamas, it’s certainly goats in formal attire, showcasing their special talents…er, clean teeth…in front of a panel of judges. Goat beauty pageants? Yeah, they’re a thing — at least, they are in Lithuania. This past Sunday, the village of Ramygala held their seventh-annual goat beauty pageant, where one winner with superior skin and costuming was chosen out of all the contestants.
What does a goat beauty pageant look like, exactly? Ramygala’s pageant starts with a parade led by a brass band and followed by each of the contestants, led, of course, by their owners. Of these, six goats are chosen as finalists, from which one is chosen as “Top Goat.”
“The judges include the local member of parliament, the head of a local school, and a cucumber farmer,” the BBC’s Tim Allman reported in a video covering the affair.
And of course, as in most beauty pageants, the goat pageant wasn’t without its fair share of drama. According to Reuters, “several contestants stubbornly refused to walk and were instead carried by their owners.”
This year’s honor went to Demyte (“Little Spot”), a 16-month-old female goat with white and black spots and two roses adorning her head. Her prize for winning was cakes, jars of honey, and coupons for a haircut. (Though, as Allman points out, it’s unclear who’s actually getting the haircut — Demyte, or her owner, veterinarian Ferdinandas Petkevicius.) Demyte also received a crown for winning.
For his part, Petkevicius seemed excited about Demyte’s win, though he does admit that he would have done things a little differently had he remembered: “We forgot to polish the nails,” he told Reuters. “We thought of this only at the last minute and it was too late then.”
Forget about Miss America. Can we please make goat beauty pageants a thing in the United States?
