Some shit that women's gymnastics needs to retire
Disclosure: I am a former gymnast. I was never high level (not even close!) but I truly loved and still love the sport.
(1) First off, let's be honest. This is still a very *white* sport.
An example harks back to 2013. That was the year that Simone Biles won her first world championships: she won the gold in the all-around and floor, silver on the vault, and bronze on the balance beam. That year she became the first black woman to win an all-around title at the world championships. (It is also notable that this came just a year after Gabrielle Douglas's record of being the first black woman to win an all-around Olympic title.)
...Just a note to people who don't follow the sport: it isn't just my opinion, but Simone Biles is quite possibly the greatest gymnast ever. (I say possibly because the sport has changed greatly over the decades, such that it is hard to compare gymnasts across different eras in any fair and meaningful way.)
But to return to the topic at hand: Biles won bronze on the balance beam at the world championships in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2013. The gold was won by Aliyah Mustafina of Russia and the silver by Biles' teammate Kyla Ross of the United States. Italian gymnasts Vanessa Ferrari and Carlotta Ferlito finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
Following this finish Ferlito made the following comments to the media: "I told (teammate Vanessa Ferrari) that next time we should also paint our skin black so then we can win, too."
Wow. The fuck????
A second example has been the treatment of Gabrielle Douglas, the all-around winner in London (2012). 'Rio 2016: Gabby Douglas’s Olympics experience fits the pattern of how we treat black female athletes'. (The link discusses the double standards involved in the way that Douglas has been treated in comparison to other, whiter athletes.)
Asian gymnasts also suffer from this: take a gander at this commentary by a French commentator on the Japanese women's gymnastics team. The commentator in question (I'm French and I watched the video linked to on the page, so I'm translating here) made a comment about 'all these little characters' (in a really condescending way) and then later referred to the gymnasts again as 'litte Pikachus' (i.e. referring to Pokémon).
Here is a second example of racism against Asian gymnasts, by the president of the International Gymnastics Federation (!!) who criticized Chinese gymnasts for being 'robotic' and instead of crediting Japan and Japanese culture for the success of the men's gymnastics team, stated that it was due to 'western influences'.
Uhuh. Yeah. I'll go with NO.
(2) Misogyny in women's gymnastics.
I swear, speaking on a personal level, if I hear ONE MORE commentator talking about a female gymnast's 'beautiful lines' (note also that I've almost never heard black gymnasts being referred to as such, btw, in that they never seem to achieve the level of 'desirability' that white gymnasts do in the eyes of these asshole commentators) I'm gonna have to hurt a motherfucker.
Here is an article discussing just how sexist commentary on female athletes is (focuses on Rio Olympics and includes gymnastics but also discusses other sports). For example One gymnast was criticised when her leotard "failed to complement her skin tone".
I challenge you to find ANY examples of this kind of bullshit commentary being offered up about male athletes.
The following link discusses just how sexist the rules in gymnastics are by comparing the rules for men's and women's gymnastics. (Eye opening, really.) Another commentary on... well... commentary during the Olympics (which also includes gymnastics) is here. Here is another link on the same thing.
It's unfortunate that I didn't manage to find a link to it, but I recently watched a video in which US coach Bela Karolyi (i.e. this is the guy who, with his wife Marta, began his career as a coach in Romania, training Nadia Comaneci among others, before defecting to the United States) bragged about the fact that he had brought about a new kind of gymnastics. More specifically, a new kind of body type in gymnastics. In other words he thought it was AWESOME that while gymnasts used to look like women (i.e. prior to gymnasts like and Olga Korbut in 1972 and Comaneci in 1976), they now looked like tiny little girls.
Kim Warren is a former gymnast who spent time at the Karolyi ranch and was cut from the Olympic team. She stated that, "Bela didn't like my body type, that was it," Warren said. "When we went to the final camp in Orlando, I think Bela was hoping I would perform badly because he already had his mind made up. But I didn't."
One gymnast who actually suffered as a result of being judged on her body size, IMO, is U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson. Johnson, who was shorter and more muscular than her teammate (i.e. at the Beijing Olympics in 2008) Nastia Liukin, was really treated in a pretty gross manner by some judges and TV commentators, honestly.
(The following is from this link.) "Johnson is probably best remembered for her smiley persona and her epic all-around showdown with the willowy Nastia Liukin, the daughter of Soviet champion Valeri. Liukin beat Johnson for the gold in Beijing, 63.325 to 62.725, but the difference between them was measured in more than start values and points earned. It was a rivalry characterized in terms of darkness versus light, force versus grace, a "little ball of power," as The New York Times put it, versus "the flexibility of a prima ballerina." Jock versus artist. Shawn Johnson, for all of her talents and abilities, was never considered an artist. Last month at the Olympic Media Summit in Dallas, she obliquely indicated why this might be. She was talking about weight loss and body shape, in terms usually reserved for the covers of celebrity magazines. Since Beijing, she said, she had gained and lost about 25 pounds from her 4-foot-9 frame. At her heaviest, when she stopped full-time training and allowed herself to eat typical teenage fare like ice cream and pizza, she received brutal criticism from fans, especially on the sport's message boards, and from the tabloids. "That whole process kind of broke me down and taught me something," Johnson said. "People put too much emphasis on looks."
Another Olympic gymnast, Alexa Moreno (who represented Mexico in 2016 in Rio), was body shamed, being referred to as 'fat' and 'pig'.
Achieving the body standards set by people like the Karolyis takes its toll on young girls and on their bodies. Many former gymnasts who trained with the Karolyis described them as being abusive. "Rodica Dunca, who at age 15 competed for Romania at the 1980 Moscow Games, gave a startling 2002 interview to ProSport about life at the Karolyis’ Deva, Romania, training center. (The interview, not available online, was later unearthed by the gymnastics blog Triple Full.) “Some days we were beaten until the blood streamed out of our noses,” Dunca said. “Hunger was our eternal enemy.” Breakfast, she recalled, consisted of “one slice of salami, two nuts, and a glass of milk. In the evening we’d get the same menu, only without the nuts.” The gymnasts’ water intake was severely restricted, too, Dunca said, with desperate gymnasts driven to drinking toilet water. (The coaches cracked down on this practice by making the athletes use the bathroom with the door open.) Dunca also alleged that the gymnasts were given injections to prevent them from menstruating and said they were forced to take dozens of unidentified but speedlike pills per day.")
"Betty Okino, who competed for the U.S. team in the 1992 Barcelona Games, estimated in Joan Ryan’s 1995 exposé Little Girls in Pretty Boxes that she and other Karolyi gymnasts consumed fewer than 1,000 calories per day in the weeks ahead of the games, despite the fact they were also training eight hours each day. Breakfast was an apple." (It is important to note however that Okino did not characterize what she went through as abuse.)
One gymnast who is an example of the consequences of this kind of pressure is Christy Henrich, who was trained by another 'legendary' US coach, Al Fong. "Five days after her 22nd birthday she succumbed to multiple organ failure, a consequence of five years of anorexia for which she was hospitalized repeatedly. At one point her weight plummeted below 50 pounds. Henrich said she first decided to lose weight after an American judge told her that at 90 pounds, the 4-foot-11-inch gymnast was too fat to make the 1992 Olympic team. She also said her coach Al Fong called her "the Pillsbury Dough Boy," a charge he denied." (From this reference.)
My point here is that this level of emphasis on thinness and body shape is simply not something that male gymnasts have to deal with. Part of the reason for this seems to be that women's gymnastics is a sport where appearance matters in one's score. But I'd venture to say that part of it is misogyny, as well. Even more, I'd state outright that any requirement in the code of points, aside from being fully dressed and not having snot hanging from your nose, is also misogynistic as hell.
(1) First off, let's be honest. This is still a very *white* sport.
An example harks back to 2013. That was the year that Simone Biles won her first world championships: she won the gold in the all-around and floor, silver on the vault, and bronze on the balance beam. That year she became the first black woman to win an all-around title at the world championships. (It is also notable that this came just a year after Gabrielle Douglas's record of being the first black woman to win an all-around Olympic title.)
...Just a note to people who don't follow the sport: it isn't just my opinion, but Simone Biles is quite possibly the greatest gymnast ever. (I say possibly because the sport has changed greatly over the decades, such that it is hard to compare gymnasts across different eras in any fair and meaningful way.)
But to return to the topic at hand: Biles won bronze on the balance beam at the world championships in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2013. The gold was won by Aliyah Mustafina of Russia and the silver by Biles' teammate Kyla Ross of the United States. Italian gymnasts Vanessa Ferrari and Carlotta Ferlito finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
Following this finish Ferlito made the following comments to the media: "I told (teammate Vanessa Ferrari) that next time we should also paint our skin black so then we can win, too."
Wow. The fuck????
A second example has been the treatment of Gabrielle Douglas, the all-around winner in London (2012). 'Rio 2016: Gabby Douglas’s Olympics experience fits the pattern of how we treat black female athletes'. (The link discusses the double standards involved in the way that Douglas has been treated in comparison to other, whiter athletes.)
Asian gymnasts also suffer from this: take a gander at this commentary by a French commentator on the Japanese women's gymnastics team. The commentator in question (I'm French and I watched the video linked to on the page, so I'm translating here) made a comment about 'all these little characters' (in a really condescending way) and then later referred to the gymnasts again as 'litte Pikachus' (i.e. referring to Pokémon).
Here is a second example of racism against Asian gymnasts, by the president of the International Gymnastics Federation (!!) who criticized Chinese gymnasts for being 'robotic' and instead of crediting Japan and Japanese culture for the success of the men's gymnastics team, stated that it was due to 'western influences'.
Uhuh. Yeah. I'll go with NO.
(2) Misogyny in women's gymnastics.
I swear, speaking on a personal level, if I hear ONE MORE commentator talking about a female gymnast's 'beautiful lines' (note also that I've almost never heard black gymnasts being referred to as such, btw, in that they never seem to achieve the level of 'desirability' that white gymnasts do in the eyes of these asshole commentators) I'm gonna have to hurt a motherfucker.
Here is an article discussing just how sexist commentary on female athletes is (focuses on Rio Olympics and includes gymnastics but also discusses other sports). For example One gymnast was criticised when her leotard "failed to complement her skin tone".
I challenge you to find ANY examples of this kind of bullshit commentary being offered up about male athletes.
The following link discusses just how sexist the rules in gymnastics are by comparing the rules for men's and women's gymnastics. (Eye opening, really.) Another commentary on... well... commentary during the Olympics (which also includes gymnastics) is here. Here is another link on the same thing.
It's unfortunate that I didn't manage to find a link to it, but I recently watched a video in which US coach Bela Karolyi (i.e. this is the guy who, with his wife Marta, began his career as a coach in Romania, training Nadia Comaneci among others, before defecting to the United States) bragged about the fact that he had brought about a new kind of gymnastics. More specifically, a new kind of body type in gymnastics. In other words he thought it was AWESOME that while gymnasts used to look like women (i.e. prior to gymnasts like and Olga Korbut in 1972 and Comaneci in 1976), they now looked like tiny little girls.
Kim Warren is a former gymnast who spent time at the Karolyi ranch and was cut from the Olympic team. She stated that, "Bela didn't like my body type, that was it," Warren said. "When we went to the final camp in Orlando, I think Bela was hoping I would perform badly because he already had his mind made up. But I didn't."
One gymnast who actually suffered as a result of being judged on her body size, IMO, is U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson. Johnson, who was shorter and more muscular than her teammate (i.e. at the Beijing Olympics in 2008) Nastia Liukin, was really treated in a pretty gross manner by some judges and TV commentators, honestly.
(The following is from this link.) "Johnson is probably best remembered for her smiley persona and her epic all-around showdown with the willowy Nastia Liukin, the daughter of Soviet champion Valeri. Liukin beat Johnson for the gold in Beijing, 63.325 to 62.725, but the difference between them was measured in more than start values and points earned. It was a rivalry characterized in terms of darkness versus light, force versus grace, a "little ball of power," as The New York Times put it, versus "the flexibility of a prima ballerina." Jock versus artist. Shawn Johnson, for all of her talents and abilities, was never considered an artist. Last month at the Olympic Media Summit in Dallas, she obliquely indicated why this might be. She was talking about weight loss and body shape, in terms usually reserved for the covers of celebrity magazines. Since Beijing, she said, she had gained and lost about 25 pounds from her 4-foot-9 frame. At her heaviest, when she stopped full-time training and allowed herself to eat typical teenage fare like ice cream and pizza, she received brutal criticism from fans, especially on the sport's message boards, and from the tabloids. "That whole process kind of broke me down and taught me something," Johnson said. "People put too much emphasis on looks."
Another Olympic gymnast, Alexa Moreno (who represented Mexico in 2016 in Rio), was body shamed, being referred to as 'fat' and 'pig'.
Achieving the body standards set by people like the Karolyis takes its toll on young girls and on their bodies. Many former gymnasts who trained with the Karolyis described them as being abusive. "Rodica Dunca, who at age 15 competed for Romania at the 1980 Moscow Games, gave a startling 2002 interview to ProSport about life at the Karolyis’ Deva, Romania, training center. (The interview, not available online, was later unearthed by the gymnastics blog Triple Full.) “Some days we were beaten until the blood streamed out of our noses,” Dunca said. “Hunger was our eternal enemy.” Breakfast, she recalled, consisted of “one slice of salami, two nuts, and a glass of milk. In the evening we’d get the same menu, only without the nuts.” The gymnasts’ water intake was severely restricted, too, Dunca said, with desperate gymnasts driven to drinking toilet water. (The coaches cracked down on this practice by making the athletes use the bathroom with the door open.) Dunca also alleged that the gymnasts were given injections to prevent them from menstruating and said they were forced to take dozens of unidentified but speedlike pills per day.")
"Betty Okino, who competed for the U.S. team in the 1992 Barcelona Games, estimated in Joan Ryan’s 1995 exposé Little Girls in Pretty Boxes that she and other Karolyi gymnasts consumed fewer than 1,000 calories per day in the weeks ahead of the games, despite the fact they were also training eight hours each day. Breakfast was an apple." (It is important to note however that Okino did not characterize what she went through as abuse.)
One gymnast who is an example of the consequences of this kind of pressure is Christy Henrich, who was trained by another 'legendary' US coach, Al Fong. "Five days after her 22nd birthday she succumbed to multiple organ failure, a consequence of five years of anorexia for which she was hospitalized repeatedly. At one point her weight plummeted below 50 pounds. Henrich said she first decided to lose weight after an American judge told her that at 90 pounds, the 4-foot-11-inch gymnast was too fat to make the 1992 Olympic team. She also said her coach Al Fong called her "the Pillsbury Dough Boy," a charge he denied." (From this reference.)
My point here is that this level of emphasis on thinness and body shape is simply not something that male gymnasts have to deal with. Part of the reason for this seems to be that women's gymnastics is a sport where appearance matters in one's score. But I'd venture to say that part of it is misogyny, as well. Even more, I'd state outright that any requirement in the code of points, aside from being fully dressed and not having snot hanging from your nose, is also misogynistic as hell.