South Africa's new constitution - ratified in 1996 - included specific safeguards for LGBTQ rights, and to this day, South Africa remains the only country in Africa to have legalised same-sex marriage.įor Chedino, however, real equality remained elusive, and she was well aware of the dangers associated with being openly trans. Alicia is barefoot as she realized during her performance that she was wearing two left high-heeled shoes.
Dance caption definition full#
Years later, while volunteering at Gender DynamiX - now one of South Africa's biggest nonprofits for trans and gender-diverse communities - Chedino would, for the first time, meet someone who had gone through the full gender-affirming process, Caroline.Īlicia performs during a Divas in Cabaret evening at Rosie's Inn in Elsie's River, Cape Town, South Africa, in 2014. She found a book written by RuPaul - the American drag queen and actor - which helped answer a lot of her questions, and she chatted to other LGBTQ contestants backstage or after a show. The more time she spent at pageants, the more Chedino was exposed to the LGBTQ community.
"I could look at myself in a mirror and, for the first time, recognise the person who was looking back at me." While South Africa slowly grew into its new role as Africa's economic powerhouse, Chedino, too, discovered a way of existing in the world that felt right - she loved wearing female clothing. After she began her hormone treatment, Chedino was banned from several pageants, including this one, as organizers felt the hormones gave her an unfair advantage over other contestants. Even today, crowned queens and kings speak of "the power of the sash" - winners receive a sash and a crown - and they quickly become important ambassadors for their communities.Ĭhedino (middle) orders a drink during the 2014 Miss Temptation beauty pageant in Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa, in 2014. When Chedino was in her late teens, LGBTQ pageants were already wild, loud and long, and winning one could be a transformative experience.
It felt so good, even if it was only for a second." Chedino and her partner ended up winning second place. "I suddenly had this feeling of 'Now or never.' I put on a Latin dress and danced as a girl for the first time. One day, after signing up for a boys-only Latin dance competition, Chedino decided to take a major step - wearing women's clothing in public. She played soccer and competed in Latin ballroom dance as a boy, but she says "I was pretending to be something my family and my peers wanted me to be." She was unhappy and uncomfortable. In high school, Chedino found herself living a double life. "I knew one day, someday, that was going to be me," Chedino continues.Ĭhedino might have grown up surrounded by the glamor of pageantry - her mother and her aunt were both successful beauty queens - but her early childhood was filled with turbulence and pain.Ĭhedino's friend Alicia (left) and Chedino get ready backstage during a Divas in Cabaret performance at the Fergus Inn in Elsie's River, Cape Town, South Africa, in 2012. Sharon had just won that year's local chapter of the Spring Queen beauty pageant, a competition organized by textile workers. The woman in red was Chedino's aunt, Sharon. Then it fell away, and I saw a gorgeous, elegant woman standing in a silver foil dress with these long black curls and this broad smile," she recalls. Chedino, 39, was only 3 years old at the time but still remembers the moment clearly. One of Chedino Martin's first memories is of a woman in red standing in the doorway of her grandmother's house in Heideveld, a suburb in the Athlone part of Cape Town, South Africa. Three days before her gender-affirming surgery, Chedino Martin poses for the camera in the home she shares with her fiancé, Keagan, and his deaf parents, Maria and Keith, in the Hanover Park neighborhood of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2017.
0 kommentar(er)
