Girlhood in the arena
real athletes wear leotards
A little over a month ago, we were in Paris. It was a few weeks before the Olympics, but we could see glimpses of it everywhere. The bleachers along the Seine, rings on the Eiffel Tower, signs in the metro highlighting the stadium stops around the city. I read later that it was 15% less crowded than usual in July,1 which made for a really beautiful time to visit, a highlight of our extended honeymoon.
While we didn’t get to stay in France for the festivities, we did enjoy them from home in Pittsburgh. Sitting on pillows in front of the TV, eating fried empanadas, and providing unofficial judging for the synchronized divers whose feet were pointed just a little too much to the right and splashed just a little too big. Every time we’d point out these minuscule errors I had to laugh at us thinking of Teddy Roosevelt’s arena and its critics.2 Because it’s true, it takes no courage at all to criticize athletes from the comfort of the couch, and all of the courage and vulnerability in the world to train for and enter the arena.
Out of all Olympic events, both winter and summer, my favorite is always the women’s gymnastics. I don’t just watch the highlights. I try to see every gymnast on each apparatus. I don’t fast forward, I want it in real time with the moments in between too, lining up to move from beam to vault, chatting with a teammate while waiting for the score, hugging the gymnast from another country who just finished her routine, laughing at a comment we can’t hear on the camera.
Gymnastics has all of the elements for me, the whole spectrum.
It’s girlhood, and joy, and fear, and shame, and pride.
It’s standing alone on your own two feet and being a part of a team.
It’s age, and youth, and wisdom. And discipline that is so beyond physical.
And it’s freudenfreude3—finding joy in someone else’s joy. The feeling you get when they stick the landing as if you just did it yourself.
This is probably how sports fans feel every day, huh?
But for me, just once every four years.
I loved watching Simone, Jordan, Sunisa, and Jade light up after their routines and run to the sidelines to hug each other, talk about the TikTok’s they’d make with their medals, and skip across the floor with their flag.
Why don’t we skip more?
Two of my favorite still-frame images of the event are of Simone and Jordan bowing to Rebecca Andrade, a Brazilian gymnast, receiving her gold medal. How she and Simone, the best two gymnastic athletes in the world hugged multiple times during the televised events and said they make each other better culminating in this amazing moment.
Or Zhou Yaqin, the Chinese gymnast, one of the best in the world, posing with two Italian medalists and learning the trend of biting the medal for the podium photo. Just ladies supporting ladies, side by side, on the biggest stage in the world.
I stopped competitive gymnastics myself when I was 12, at least a few years younger than most of the girls in the Olympics. But watching those moments on TV brought me right back to my bare feet on the blue carpeted spring floor, chalk on my blistered hands, and the first few notes of Shania Twain that started my floor routine. I remember having so much fun. I remember some of the pain too, coaches sitting on our backs in our splits, pounding headaches. It wasn’t easy even as a kid.
One night after the coverage, I rummaged around my basement to find a specific cardboard box stuffed with white paper. I hadn’t looked at my trophies in years. They’re a gold plastic on top, maybe cheap marble for the base with metal plaques: ”Baker’s School of Gymnastics Spring Fling Invitational: 1st place all around,” “Mass USA Gymnastics 2003 State Championships, level 4: 14th place,” and so on. The little gold plastic gymnasts on top of the trophies do handstands or salute imaginary judges.
The clearest memories I have these days are the good ones—at the gym sprinting up the front stairs and down the back ones with friends for our warm-ups, practicing my beam dismount, the tumble track. I never played other sports, but I loved this one. Doing better than myself the day before. Having a coach who would stay late with me to practice on the bars. None of us trying at all to stand still when our teammates floor music came on and we couldn’t stop dancing from the sidelines. And, also, overtime, how I became too aware of my simple and fragile human body to be able to continue flinging it around like that. A little taste of adulthood I guess. I couldn’t do what these athletes have managed into their 20s and 30s.
Maybe that’s why I love watching it so much from my vantage point now. It reminds me of joy, the sweet delusion of invincibility, friendship, girlhood. I noticed that in most interviews with the gymnasts past and present they talk about fun too. They put in the work for years leading up to the games and when they get there another goal they talk about in interviews is letting the joy of it wash over them, the reason they started the sport in the first place.
That night, I took a damp paper towel to the trophies and wiped off decades of dust. I set them on top of our bar in the dining room, and texted my mom.
At 32, I’m so proud of that 11-year-old girl and everything brave and vulnerable and fun that gymnastics represents at its best.
What I’m loving right now
Speaking of fried empanadas, my empanada press, which was an amazing wedding gift and I’m astonished at just how within-reach they are to make from masa harina at home.
They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On cancer, love, and living even so by Lori Jakiela (I heard Lori speak on a memoir panel at Pittsburgh Book Festival and got her book from the library, it’s beautiful, honest, and stream-of-consciousness)
A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: getting to know the world’s most misunderstood bird by Rosemary Mosco (a gift from my mom, do you have any idea how many different species of pigeon there are?!)
What was eaten was given: poems by Wilhelmina “Billie” Sainwood, a friend from college, she has written a remarkable collection, highly recommend
Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto, another incredibly talented friend I first met while we were at school in Ohio, her poetry collection comes out this month, you could join me on the pre-order list
You can also read about and order my little poetry chapbook from here.
https://universe.byu.edu/sports/number-of-olympic-tourists-in-paris-lower-than-expected
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” -Theadore Roosevelt
Freudenfreude: joy in another person’s joy. Originally touted as a German word, turns out it’s not German at all, but I still like it. https://www.thelocal.de/20221202/freudenfreude-why-we-should-all-embrace-this-made-up-german-word
I was a Crenshaw's Girls Team mom about the time you were a competitive gymnast. My daughter Margaret is your age and enjoyed those years tremendously as you describe so well. Congratulations on the honeymoon. You made it to Paris at last!