On reflection, it was all too predictable. What else would you do?

Caster Semenya had her gender questioned in the media throughout the world, so what was the response of Athletics South Africa (ASA)? To dress her up, make her as beautiful and glamorous as possible and have her picture plastered over the front cover of a national gossip mag.

It’s not only the cover, it’s inside too. Four pages of it. The sales pitch reads: “Wow, look at me now!” And: “Athletics star Caster Semenya as you’ve never seen her before – transformed by YOU from powergirl to glamour girl.”

Yet the haste with which this make-over has been brought to “YOU” is deeply questionable. And please be aware that this column does not, as a rule, voice an opinion on the contents of the South African glossies.

The chances are that Semenya felt pretty good about herself when this photoshoot was done. You have to hope so. But you have to know, too, that she has become more than just an unwitting athlete dealing with horribly degrading public exposure, she has become a political figure. It started with the politicians in her own home athletics federation, but then it simply escalated. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela joined the crowd and her return home was then broadcast on national television. Finally it fell to Jacob Zuma, the South African president, to welcome her and to pour scorn on the way she had been treated.

Thus did the ranks close around her, but the business of showing support for Semenya, which started as a groundswell of sympathy, then became us-against-the-world, Semenya somehow morphed into a symbol of South Africa fighting international oppression and this eventually evolved into an anti-racist crusade for her supporters who chose to see prejudice of colour in her treatment by the IAAF. There has, incidentally, been no evidence to support the idea that colour played a role, but nevertheless the argument simply got stronger. And the louder the noise, the more important it was for Semenya’s gender to be indisputably female.

In “YOU”, she announces: “I'd like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance. I'd also like to learn to do my own make-up” and: “I've never bought my own clothes – my mum buys them for me. But now that I know what I can look like, I'd like to dress like this more often.”

You can just imagine the IAAF’s analysts, who have been working on some deep and complicated science to verify her gender situation, reading that she likes dressing-up and thinking: “Well, that solves that then.”

More to the point, having been so scathing about the public questioning of Semenya’s gender, why is it that the only piece of media that the ASA appears to have sanctioned is one that brings the gender issue crashing right back to the forefront of the conversation?

The answer may lie with Wilfred Daniels, an ASA coach, who resigned last week after claiming he was “part of the collective responsibility and blame” for the situation Semenya finds herself in. His claims may suggest the ASA was very well aware before Berlin that gender verification was an issue for Semenya.

Daniels claims that she had undergone tests in Pretoria before flying to Berlin and also that she was misled, that she was told that she was being drug-tested, not gender tested. Daniels' account is in contrast with the ASA’s, which has been vocal in its outrage at the IAAF’s decision to conduct sex tests. The ASA has stated no tests were carried out in South Africa before last month’s World Championships, with Leonard Chuene, its president, calling on Daniels to prove his claims while accusing the world governing body of racism for singling out Semenya.

It has long been the view around the IAAF that ASA should never have brought Semenya to Berlin for the World Championships, that ASA were too blinkered by a desire for medals to ask Semenya to stand down from the Championships while her position was clarified. If we are to believe Daniels, then the IAAF was right.

Increasingly, Semenya is resembling a pawn being shifted around the chess board by powerful controlling forces. It was never necessary to turn her very personal, medical situation into a national campaign but now that it is, it seems important that the campaign wins.

On the subject of posing for “YOU”, why do it now? Why such a public statement about her femininity now when a team of scientists are simultaneously drawing conclusions that may not agree with it. It is indecently hasty when she could easily have waited until the science had been completed.

It is the right of every professional athlete to cash in on their success, and let’s hope that Semenya has done well from “YOU”. It is also the right of every young girl to dress up. And it is only understandable that Semenya would want to flaunt her feminity, but am I alone in feeling deeply uncomfortable about these pictures?