Miss Nigeria Miss saHHara (L) blows a kiss
to the audience during the Miss Trans Star
International beauty pageant in Cornella de
Llobregat on September 18, 2016.
Miss SaHHara was born in the wrong country, and
in the wrong body.
Repression in her native Nigeria almost drove her to
suicide, but this weekend she was cruising down the
runway in a cream dress – one of several finalists
at the Miss Trans Star International beauty pageant
in Barcelona, Europe’s main such event.
Set up in 2010 in the Spanish Mediterranean
seaside city, the fifth edition of the contest this
weekend crowned Brazil’s Rafaela Manfrini as this
year’s transsexual queen, although winning was
secondary for participants who have often
experienced discrimination and repression.
“Here all of us are winners already, we won our
life,” said runner-up Tallen Abu Hanna from Israel.
Persecuted by their governments, victims of
discrimination or rejected by their own families,
many of the 25 candidates went through hell and
high water before summoning up the courage to strut
their stuff in swimsuits or evening gowns.
“This is an attempt to engage society,” said Thara
Wells, the contest founder.
“We want to go beyond beauty and tell the life story
of each girl.”
– Escape or death –
Among the candidates were transsexuals from Japan,
South Africa, Colombia, Turkey, and Nigeria, whose
activist chat stood out.
Sporting a cream dress with a plunging neckline,
Miss SaHHara glided down the runway without a
hint of shyness, drawing in the 300-strong
audience with her light-green eyes.
Nothing much remained from the young 19-year-old
man who fled Nigeria for London more than a
decade ago.
“I had severe disphoria. My breasts weren’t growing,
I didn’t have a vagina, I looked at myself in the
mirror and I did not feel comfortable with my body,”
she told AFP before the gala final Saturday.
Miss SaHHara, as she is known, always knew she
was a woman.
She would put on make-up and wear her mother’s
high heels.
But in Nigeria, where homosexuality and
transsexuality are illegal and punishable by 14 years
in jail, her situation was tough.
“In the street, they were always attacking me,
harassing me,” she said.
“I came back home and my family would harass me,
they said ‘you’re wrong, you need to change, act like
a man’.”
She twice attempted suicide and says she was
imprisoned in Nigeria for wearing women’s attire
before escaping to London, first as an illegal
migrant, then as a refugee.
“There was no way I could have survived in Nigeria,
this is why I had to leave,” she said.
In Britain, she underwent surgery to become a
woman with long, curly blond hair, big breasts and
full lips.
She works as a model and singer, and also manages
her own NGO to help transsexuals.
“London gave me the opportunity to pursue my
dreams and be my true self,” she said.
“I’m hoping that by speaking out and coming to Miss
Star, I will try to influence people or perhaps
influence my government to revoke 14 years
imprisonment for LGBT in Nigeria.”
– 2,000 murders since 2006 –
In recent years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender people have scored small victories around
the world.
Nepal, Argentina, Bolivia and Ireland are just some
of the countries to have approved laws recognising
transgender people and the United States is
considering allowing them into the army.
But there is still a lot to do.
LGBT people are still persecuted in some 80
countries, and more than 2,000 transsexuals have
been murdered since 2006, according to the Trans
Murder Monitoring Project, part of the Berlin-based
Transgender Europe NGO.
“We have very few opportunities in life, very few,”
said contest founder Wells.
Israel’s Tallen Abu Hanna concurred, saying
transsexuals have huge difficulties in finding jobs.
“In the end, lots of them have to have sex for
money.”
She has been lucky though.
A Christian Arab Israeli, she has become a celebrity
since winning a transsexual beauty pageant in her
country, and wants to take advantage of this fame
to inspire Arab people, who like she once did may
feel trapped “inside a cage.”
“I became a woman and I found peace between my
body and my soul.”
