The Olympic boxer who failed the IBA gender test but who went on to be awarded gold in women’s boxing in Paris this month has posted a video to Instagram revealing a dramatic feminine makeover.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was featured in an ad for Algerian makeup company Beauty Code. The ad begins with the fighter in boxing gloves and hair pulled back. But then the video cuts to Khelif dressed as a woman with modest makeup, dangling flower petal earrings, and a flower-print dress, along with an Olympic gold medal.
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The ad did not feature Khelif in the Muslim hijab that most women are expected to wear when being seen in public in the strict Muslim country of Algeria.
The ad comes only days after the Algerian Olympics star attempted to file a complaint naming Tesla chief Elon Musk and Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling, accusing them of harassment over social media posts calling Khelif’s gender claims into doubt.
A lawyer representing the boxer filed the complaint last Friday in France with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech.
The complaint alleges “aggravated cyber-harassment” and calls on the French government to prosecute anyone who would attack the boxer online.
Both Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting have failed the International Boxing Association’s gender eligibility tests gender tests, and both failed to medal in the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. But this year, they are tearing through their female opponents.
In 2023, the International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev explained his organization’s decision to disqualify Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting and Algeria’s Imane Khelif from competing in the IBA’s 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, according to Russia’s Tass News Agency. “Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women. According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition,” Kremlev said.
Olympics officials, though, ignored the IBA’s disqualification of the boxers and, in part, excused their decision by insisting that if the boxers’ passports said “female,” then that was all they needed to allow them to fight in the women’s category. In another interview, Olympic President Thomas Bach said that the IOC doesn’t currently possess a reliable, scientific test to tell a man from a woman.
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