Oh c’mon. You magazine just did what the rest of South Africa has been dying to do: they let down Caster Semenya’s hair, gave her a swipe of lip gloss and put her in a dress. Now she looks like Serena Williams, with better legs.
So is the pop tabloid’s makeover of the 800m world champion in bad taste or, worse, exploitation? Was Semenya locked in a wardrobe and told she could only come out when she put on the heels? It doesn’t look that way.
On the cover Semenya regards the camera boldly, her gaze warm, relaxed. Almost as if she’s done it before — privately, perhaps, in the mirror, as some little girls like to do.
In the accompanying story, Semenya sounds equally self-assured, but also up for the assignment as she tries on more clothes, comments that she’s always wanted to learn how to put on make-up and, after a while —”I’d like to try a dress.” I suspect she might be having fun.
In all the uproar it is easy to forget that Semenya is 18. An extraordinary teenager in terms of her precocious athletic talent, she sounds like an ordinary teenager in other ways — self-conscious, playful and still experimenting with her identity, whether that’s about what she’s going to wear today or what she thinks about house music, God and climate change. The views and tastes she holds today could change again tomorrow. That is the beauty of being 18.
So when professional feminists argue that this makeover is a sleazy attempt to force Semenya to conform to acceptable feminine stereotypes, I wonder what makes them so sure.
”Let Caster be Caster!” Gender Links chief Colleen Lowe Morna was quoted as saying in The Times. ”She’s made it clear she does not like dresses, high heels or glamour.”
The Big Girls have laid it down. The rest of us may speculate about what Caster Semenya dreams about at night, but they really understand her. She ”doesn’t like glamour”? Well then, there’s nothing more to be said, except, perhaps: ”Go to your room and wipe that muck off your face.”
Who knows, maybe that’s exactly what Semenya did the minute she was released from the You stylist’s clutches.
Let’s face it, You didn’t dream up the Caster makeover out of the kindness of its big heart. It did it because Semenya is hot news for all the right and all the wrong reasons (tabloid bonus point!), and they sell magazines on the strength of sizzling trysts, mid-gets who marry models and, er, anything Steve Hofmeyr cares to mention.
Why Semenya agreed to it is more mystifying. It has even been suggested that the makeover was part of a cynical publicity stunt by her managers while waiting for the results of the IAAF gender verification tests. That would be horribly manipulative, though I would be surprised to learn that Athletics South Africa, which has mangled everything to do with this sensitive case, is capable of such strategic thinking.
We will probably never know the whole story. I’m happy to take Semenya at face value. ”Now I know I can look like this, I’d like to dress like this more often,” she told You reporter Yvonne Beyers.
Tracksuit Mondays, lipstick Tuesdays, hair up Wednesdays, hair down Thursdays, trainers, heels, hoodies, bling — Choices — big and small. I think that’s why my mother burned her bra.