Long hair and charming makeup. Algerian boxer Imane Khelifi’s radical transformation

Voluminous auburn curls framing her glowing face, cat-eye make-up, pink floral dress with matching earrings. Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelief has been transformed. The 25-year-old Algerian poses proudly in front of the camera with his arms crossed, a wide smile on his lips and a gold medal decorated around his neck. As a rebuke to those who criticized her for not being “feminine” enough in the ring at the Paris 2024 Olympics, to the point of questioning her gender. “She didn’t have time to waste in beauty salons or shopping to win the medal. He never felt the need to meet these standards to prove his existence,” the caption of this video, posted in Arabic on August 14, on the Instagram account of the Algerian beauty institute Code, reads. transformation. The post was also shared on the main stakeholder’s page, which is followed by more than 2.1 million subscribers.

“She can be feminine and elegant when she wants to be”

Far from being evidence of capitulation to the pressures placed on the athlete regarding his appearance, this genuine plea explains that Imane “did not seek to change his appearance to conform to the molds the world wants to lock us into,” but by choosing to; naturally to compete, he wanted to deliver a “much deeper” message. “Clothes do not make one a monk, and one’s appearance does not reveal one’s essence. She can be feminine and elegant when she wants to be, but she doesn’t need decorations or high heels in the ring. You just need strategy, power and punch, which are the essence of his personality,” he defends today. Before you remember. “Just as mustaches do not define a man, so do beetles, dresses, extensions and makeup do not define a woman.”

The author of this speech even allows himself to make a frontal attack on one of Imane Khelifi’s opponents, lamenting that “not all tracks are the place for truly passionate athletes like him.” “The Italian showed us that even those who cry in the schoolyards, those who make up lies to steal food from others, can end up in the ring,” we can read, as boxer Angela Carini left her quarter-final. fight against Imane Khelief just forty-six seconds into the ordeal.

After Hasiba Bulmerka, there was “never” a controversy

The publication also points out that “never since Hasiba Bulmerka has an athlete ‘sparked so much controversy'”, referring to the Algerian middle-distance runner, world champion in the 1500m at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Indeed, in recent days. Imane Khelief has been subjected to a barrage of harassment on social media, forcing her to file a complaint for “cyber-harassment due to gender, public insult due to gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insult due to origin”, the Paris prosecutor’s office asked AFP on Wednesday.

An athlete’s image and body have an impact on the career of female athletes, analyzed media, gender and sport sociology researcher Natasha Lapeyrou. Madame Figaro last February. A treatment that particularly affects female boxers, added Sandy Montagnola, a researcher at the CNRS Arènes laboratory. “Until 2012, the Olympics were not open to female boxers. Today we are making them public. This questions things and we move forward even if the archetypes persist. We accept that female athletes have an athletic body, provided they show signs of femininity,” he explained. Indeed, the work of sociologist Catherine Louvaux also showed that those who participated in “boy sports” tended to wear make-up and style their hair more than others, as if to make “guarantees” of conformity to sponsors and the public. Imane Khelief is the exception that proves the rule.