One Test for All

It is the duty of any ambitious athlete to maintain a disciplined and punishing training schedule for months or even years before a major event. Rippling muscles on their necks , shoulders ,arms, thighs, legs and "six-pack" hard, muscular midriffs are the end results of months of such sustained work-outs.
These muscles are essential for the athletes' peak performance.
No muscles , no medals!
This is why millions of people are suspicious of the motives behind the demand for a gender-check for Caster Semenya.
There is no dispute that Caster Semenya , the record clinching 800 metres female world champion looks like a man.
The South African female athlete DOES look and sound like a man!
And so what? Is that news? What should she have looked like?
Elegant, graceful, stepping gingerly on the tracks ;like a ballerina?
How many of the other world -class female athletes look like women?
Is is feminine to have those rippling, strong muscles of a weightlifter which are the trade marks of ANY top-class female athlete worth her salt?
One would not be surprised to hear demands for drug tests for "overperforming" unknown athletes from "nowhere"; but a demand for a gender-test for a female athlete who looks like a man ?
Strange.Very strange.
It was said that Caster came from NOWHERE to win the title. Very funny! From nowhere? Yet she defeated athletes from "somewhere " by a very wide berth. She and her coach were able to develope a winning strategy which gave her the gold medal in record-breaking time. To the chagrin of some people.
Their strategy, according to Caster was: "Allow them to run ahead , then at 200 metres to the post, sprint forward and kill them. Finish them !"
The gender-check should be not for Caster only , but should be extended to ALL leading female athletes. Especially the female athletes from Germany, Russia and the Eastern European countries. Have you seen the muscles these "women" parade?
Please, if you are reading this and you KNOW or you have seen any medal-wining female athlete , anywhere on earth, who has a feminine body, kindly "educate" me.
What does a "feminine body" look like? It is soft and supple. Not created for extreme physical exertion. Definitely, not rock hard and bulging with strong muscles!
When a man and a woman wear identical tight-fitting jeans and T-shirts, one should be able to differentiate between their body shapes. A flat and trim tummy looks good on anybody. A normal woman should not be flat and straight, front and back, like a ruler!

Since "feminity" is the issue now, it is interesting that the "powers-that-be" in the multi-billion pounds Fashion Industry have a very different mind-set to the World Athletics Governing Council about what the female body should look like.
The latter thinks women should look like women; but the former does not think so.
So while we are at it , why not extend the gender -check ; coupled with a sanity -check to the "beautiful women" who strut their stuff on catwalks and those women and girls who would do ANYTHING to maintain the "in-look" of looking skeletal and as flat as the back of a double-decker bus?
In order for them to comply with the dictates of the "all-knowing" Fashion and Fitness Industry?

It is one thing to make a personal choice to reduce oneself to a neurotic state by trying and failing to achieve some perceived "perfect shape".
What is unacceptable is the mind-control by a group of people to foist their own concepts of "beauty and good looks" on the whole world.
The truth is :the healthy female figure is one that is neither obese , flabby ,skinny or extra thin.
What is normal, feminine or attractive in a size 4 or size 0 woman? With a flat skinny chest and flat skinny bum; with all her bones and tendons jutting out? Also, it is unhealthy and unattractive for anyone, male or female to be overweight.
It is unfair to put pressures on women and young girls to become thin in order to be "acceptable" as attractive and desirable.
Such pressures have caused suicides and mental illnesses like anorexia, bulimia , clinical depression and self-harm amongst the female populace.
Who reserves the right to determine the "acceptable look" for any human being? Acceptable to whom and for what purpose?
There are professional demands on some women for them to look like "Mr Atlas" or like a flat plank of wood. There are also women who are content to choose what size they want to be; that is healthy and based on their Body Mass Index (B.M.I.)
Different women have different B.M.I.s.
Women should not live their lives based on the dictates of the Fashion and Fitness Industry.
Some women are obsessed with the desire to be thin while many others are elated when the answer to their question:
" Does my bum look big in this?" is; "Yes, it does!".
Such women spend thousands of pound on bum and bust enhancing tablets, injections and implants.
Whereas some other women prefer for their pelvic bones, shoulder blades , ribs and spinal column to jut out through their size 0 clothes.
Muscular , beefy, flabby, thin or skeletal , the bottom line is: what message is being sent out by the person?
Is it " I am an athlete, or a model,or I keep fit and trim or I live my life according to the dictates of others"?
Or is it "I please myself; I don't care what others think of me:
if you don't like my shape, get ON YOUR BIKE "!
Whatever the message is, show some understanding and sympathy for why certain people look they way they look.