Masha du Toit

Well, I had an interesting, if rather surreal experience yesterday.

I was waiting in line at the check out queue at the supermarket.  I noticed a couple of young (student age) black girls, obviously a group of friends, standing in the line next to mine.  One of them was an albino.  I noticed her because she did a big double take at the magazine rack and said “Oh wow, look! Wow!” to her friends. Very excited.

I leant over to look at the magazine she was pointing at.  It was the “You” magazine, and there was a photograph of Caster Semenya on the cover. Caster was looking very different from all the media images we’ve seen of her lately – she was wearing a sexy dress, her hair was teased out in little curls and she was wearing make up. The byline said “Look at Caster Now!” or something similar. I though she looked great.

These girls were super excited. They passed the magazine around, laughing and pointing.  Then the albino girl held the magazine up in front of her face, stared at it hard and said:

“Frrrreak!” very emphatically, and with great disgust.

I was so taken aback. Oh well.

If you are wondering about Caster, here are some posts written about her on Blogher:

Here

and

here