CAROLINE WATERS UNDER THE SURFACE

She was once named Caroline Asplin and a child star in daddy's musical "Putti Plutti Pott". Today her name is Caroline Waters, she is a professional artist and married to a woman. Meet a redhead who is guarantied authentic.

We are in a popular nightclub in Oslo. An amazon with a miniskirt and flaming red hair enters the stage, hits a chord on the guitar, sings: "I don't wanna be your sugar baby, I don't wanna be your slave in paradise". The tones rise and fall, first with intense joy, next in dark melancholia. The audience applauds and scream: "More!" Caroline tears off her jacket, lifts her arms over her head, kicks the beat with the most solid boots ever seen at Smuget, and roars: "I wanna live, I wanna live right, I wanna love, I wanna love right, I wanna do what is right for me."

COSTUME CHANGE
The mini dress has been replaced by orange jeans, the stage at Smuget by the hill at Akershus Fort. Caroline Waters squints at the sun and talks willingly about everything from film, feminism and the Goddess religion to photography, books, big cities and children. About the change she's undergone, which goes far deeper than the media-hyped costume change to mini dress and black bra.

• Who were you before?
• Another, Caroline says, and shows me an old picture on a bus card, taken at the time when she was thirty pounds heavier and named Caroline Asplin. ­ I hid a lot at that time. Not just my body. I have had to work with myself. Before, I was a person who needed to master everything and have control all the time. I am less controlling now. The world has not collapsed as a result.

Caroline says the developing process sped up when she lost her mother, a year ago.

• The mourning ignited many reactions ­ I started running and lost weight, among other things. The strange thing is, Caroline asserts, that this is the first time I feel like I look like my mom. As a child, I didn't feel like I looked like my feminine, sexy mom ­ I was daddy's girl and resembled him the most. Now, I've finally felt like I, too, can be feminine and sexy. I've also changed musically ­ the performance is more raw and direct.