(no subject)

[primroseburrows]

Hi, my name is Primrose, and I don't care about the bloody Olympics, or how hot Michael Phelps is. I'm not even sure WHO he is, and, well, see above.

I work the night shift (well, mostly), and so have been able to see a piece of the Olympics live; namely, the womens' gymnastics competition, which consists of teams of identical-looking 12-year-old girls young women in glitter eye makeup doing handstands and backflips and flipping around on parallel bars, even and uneven.

Oh, they're incredibly good, all of them...you can see that the training and coaching and myriads of workouts they've been through since age, oh, three or so have really paid off. You can also see the lost childhoods, the utter pressure on them to be just Perfect, their tearful shame and the humiliation that's heaped on them if they *gasp* don't do something right, thereby eliminating their Team from getting a gold medal. And the cameras...the cameras focus on the poor crying girl who missed a step and got a 9.464 instead of the 9.823, thereby preventing her whole bloody country from Revelling in Glory.

Of course, there are the ones who get it all right, flawless, perfect, and go on to win gold after gold and do commercials for large sportswear corporations...until they're Over The Hill at twenty-two or so, and then it's adios, Kansas.

I just don't see the draw. Of course, I do like the Winter Olympics, to a point (love that Jamaican Bobsled Team!), and I suppose that the pressure is just as bad on them. I mean, geez, people like Tonya Harding are made, not born.

I know, I'm just being cynical, and I'm sure there are a lot of positive things about being in the Olympics. I do like the team sports, because it's not about individual pressure. When they suffer, they all suffer together, and they triumph as a team. I don't understand why basketball is considered a summer sport, though. I'm sure they could find a sport that's actually played in summer *coughbaseballcough* to be their big draw. And for Zeus' sake, stop letting professionals play on Olympic teams. Isn't the whole point of the Olympics to allow amateurs to show their colours? Plus, I hate pro basketball. It represents everything that's wrong with sports, namely, EgoEgoEgo. Mneh.

I'd rather watch the Red Sox, where there's absolutely no pressure. Yep, yep. No Pressure at All. Er.

Comments

[robinhoo.livejournal.com]

I confess that I watch Olympic swimming, diving, and gymnastics with something approaching religious fervor. Swimming and diving I really feel no guilt about, because the swimmers don't seem to be killing themselves, and it doesn't appear that anybody is out for blood if individual swimmers don't win a race (although I think if Michael Phelps had actually lost a race, or, God forbid (!), taken more silver and/or bronze medals than he did, we'd have been hearing about it for the next three months), and because the divers usually look like they're actually having fun (unless they brain themselves on the board or platform, a la Greg Louganis, OUCH) and they're also usually older than 13. Also, introvert that I be, I much prefer sports that focus on individual accomplishment to those that focus on team accomplishment -- individual athletes, at least ideally, do what they do to prove to themselves that they can, and I can really relate to that. But I also confess that I feel really guilty about enjoying the gymnastics as much as I do -- particularly the "women's" gymnastics. In no other sport is it so patently obvious that these athletes have completely fucked up their bodies. Even the ones who don't look prepubescent (Carly Patterson) look scary (Svetlana "Skeletona" Khorkina much?). I watch because I'm awed by what they can do -- they defy gravity as if it were nothing, and they're obviously so completely tuned in with where every body part is at every second (which is, like, the antithesis of my daily existence). But then I listen to Svetlana Khorkina say, "I want to win as much as I want to mother my own child," and I recoil. For one thing, holy crow, the priorities!!! I can't conceive of the lifelong pressure she's been under that has led to a statement like that. This was her last Olympics, because she's 25 years old and therefore all washed up, and she didn't win an individual gold, and I'm willing to wager massive sums of money that she will never have another completely happy day in her life because of it. The look she gave Carly Patterson when that child finished her floor routine was pure, untempered hate. And for the second thing, I look at Khorkina's body -- especially when she runs, and I'm expecting her femur to snap at any moment because she looks so anorexic and fragile -- and I think, "Honey, as long as that 5'9"-or-so body weighs only those 90-some pounds, not only are you not going to have won that gold, but you're not going to be mothering any children either." And then I look at the Romanian gymnasts who live in Nadia Comanece's shadow every single day, and who model naked for men's magazines just to pay for their gymnastic training, and I think, "Um, isn't that usually called prostitution?"

All these things mean that I should really stop supporting the torture sport by watching it, doesn't it? *slinks away*