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People came from far away places like Pretoria, Vaal, Soweto, Kagiso, Mohlakeng to participate in and attend the 2005 Miss Lesbian pageant at Simply Blue, one of our non-discrimination gay bars located in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
Miss lesbian is the brainchild of Tumi Ndweni who has spent months struggling and looking for participants, for sponsorship, for possible contributors. A week of excitement always precedes this event as many ‘wanna-bees’ try out for the most popular contest within our lesbian community. The prizes are not a priority for the participants. Instead the target is the crown itself, and whoever takes it home becomes the centre of attraction. Of course there are no big sponsors or advertising deals for the winners here as is the case for the heterosexualized Miss South Africa pageant. But for the beautiful rainbow queers that we are, every year in almost every city, the LGBT community embraces this pageant culture and comes up with a winner. And with all the feathers, beach wear, sport wear, semi-casual and formal wear this year, it was made clear that “You don’t have to be BUTCH to be the winner” of Miss Lesbian 2005! Olamide Makinde, of Berea, Johannesburg, topped all the confident butches with her intelligence, eloquence, well-informed understanding of her community and took her crown home. (Did we mention the woman is stunning, too?) Olamide’s win hopefully changes the perception that had started to be common that one must identify as butch in order to qualify for entry to Miss Lesbian. In fact, for the past three years of the pageant’s life, the winners have indeed all been butch, causing confusion about whether this pageant judges the gender identity of the lesbian contestant or the personality and character. |
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Olamide works as a programmes officer for FEW, and plans to further her studies in 2006 to complete her law degree. |