The accidental celebritisation of Caster Semenya

Abstract

In 2009, South African athletics star Caster Semenya won the 800-metre women's title at the track and field World Championships in Berlin. Shortly before the final heat of that event, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) confirmed reports that she had been subjected to a process of ‘gender verification’. This essay examines the ways in which the international media produced Semenya's accidental celebrity using Entman's (1993) notion of framing which ‘essentially involves selection and salience’.

Keywords:

• Caster Semenya
• accidental celebrity
• sex testing
• intersex
• enfreakment

Notes

1. On Semenya, see Amy-Chinn 2010, Vannini and Fornssler 2011, Sloop, 2012.

2. For histories of sex testing, see Daniels 1993, Heggie 2010, Ritchie 2003, Schultz 2011, 2012a, Sullivan 2011, Wackwitz 1996, 2003, and Wiederkehr 2009.

3. Other exemplars include Tamara and Irina Press, Iolanda Balas, Hermann ‘Dora’ Ratjen, Erika Schinegger, Stella Walsh, Edinanci Silva and Renee Richards.

4. It was clear that not all South Africans fell into rank with the government's public stance. In one example, a billboard advertisement for Teazers, a South African strip club, depicted a naked white woman, lounging provocatively on her back. Below the image appears the caption ‘No need for gender testing’.