Being a Confident Badass Does Not Make a Female Athlete a 'Diva' [Gymnastics]

There have been several great stories to come out of the gymnastics competition at these Games—the Fierce Five's dominant performance to win the team gold medal, Gabby Douglas' victory in the all around, Kohei Uchimura's coronation as greatest male gymnast of all time, the British men's historic team bronze in front of a hometown crowd. But almost as frequently remarked upon as these triumphant tales was a different one more suitable to the pages of a gossip rag than to sports commentary: the American media's insistence on the story of the Russian "divas."

Nearly every time the Russian team appeared onscreen, one member of the NBC crew of commentators hurled "diva" at them like it's an insult. Yet for all the discussion of "diva," the trio never backed it up with any examples of truly negative, un-sportswoman like behavior.

Instead we're shown images of them crying after they lose a competition they hoped to win — and they weren't depicted as snubbing their opponents. Or we were shown a lone fluff segment in which head coach Alexander Alexandrov was interrogated about how "difficult" his gymnasts are. While he admitted they possess challenging personalities, he didn't seem to mind it all that much. In fact, he indicated that he believes that it's part of what goes along with being great. And as former head coach of the Soviet program, Alexandrov has guided many of the champions. He knows what he's talking about.

The Russian practices were described as all out "wars" between the coaches and athletes, whereas American workouts were noted for almost assembly line-like efficiency. Of course, the commentators failed to observe a key difference between the American and Russian teams: the U.S. has enjoyed gloriously good health (for elite gymnasts, at least) over the last year whereas more than one Russian is on the mend from injuries, which explains why their practices had not gone as smoothly as those of their rivals.

(Also, I've had just about enough of describing gymnastics, or any other sport for that matter, in militarized language. In the past decade, this country has fought two actual wars-we should know better. As thrilling and intense as athletic competitions can be, they're not comparable to wars. Several years of hard work is on the line, not one's life. As the saying goes, "There's no glitter in foxholes." That's because they're no gymnasts in foxholes, either.)

The preferred target of NBC's diva-lanche was 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina. As the 18-year-old stood on the podium, waiting to get the green light from the judges to mount the uneven bars, Al Trautwig filled a moment of broadcast downtime by asking, "Have you seen any diva moments?" (Next time, if you've got dead air talk about the London weather instead.) This seemed particularly out of place because Mustafina, who should certainly be awarded a gold for the best eye makeup of the competition, was patiently waiting for her turn as the judges tabulated the score of previous competitor. That bitch.

Mustafina's practices have been perhaps more fraught than those of her teammates, in part due to her famously intense personality but also because she's been on the comeback trail from a torn ACL. This injury happened at the 2011 European Championships just as she was at the peak of her abilities and was looking to dominate the competitive season. Though she staged a remarkable comeback, she wasn't able to restore all of her difficulty. In 2010, she was unbeatable in the all-around. In 2012, she needed mistakes from the top gymnasts to challenge for the gold. Undoubtedly, this frustrated the uber-competitive Mustafina.

In the Cold War era, the Soviet gymnasts were unquestionable foes because of their connection to Communism. The Russian gymnasts of today, however, cannot be so easily turned into enemies. So perhaps "diva" has become misogynistic shorthand for "rival."

NBC struck "diva" gold during the all-around as Mustafina, who, after she fell from the beam during her routine, brushed Alexandrov, her coach aside as she went to compose herself alone. They showed this twice. I wouldn't put it past them to turn it into a gif.

And I can't lay the blame for this characterization solely at NBC's feat. The gymnastics media — which is about as niche as you can get — has also gotten in on the "diva" action. In response to Mustafina's brush off, International Gymnast editor Dwight Normile wrote, "Super talented and probably a perfectionist, Mustafina has a lot of gymnastics left in her—if coach Alexander Alexandrov is willing to put up with her. Brushing him off after her blown beam routine in the all-around final crossed the line in a coach-gymnast relationship. I don't care how mad you are."

While Normile doesn't use the D-word, his publication used it earlier in the week on Facebook to describe her training demeanor without any sort of explanation, which left commenters angry and wondering why she had been so maligned. Did she demand better lighting? A different spot in the line-up? Or did she merely express negative emotions instead of adorable ones? Maybe after her fall, she didn't want a shoulder to cry on or a cookie. Getting mad was probably the reason she came back so strongly on her next apparatus and took the bronze.

Russian coaches like Alexandrov have grown accustomed to having larger-than-life personalities on their competitive rosters. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've been able to learn more about the Russian women, who have proven to be an entertaining and dramatic lot. Svetlana Khorkina was perhaps the sports greatest diva. She emerged just a couple of years after the breakup of the USSR and quickly became known for her sultry floor routines and her outspoken outside of the gym. Khorkina was unabashedly competitive and when she failed to meet her own standards, she was forthcoming with her own frustration and anger.

Khorkina fully embraced the diva mantle. "I love being a diva," she said, "being a diva is magical. You can't catch her. She always comes out a winner."

Khorkina was not singular in her willingness to openly express her feelings on the mat. As gymnastics blogger Brigid McCarthy explains, it seems that Russians, in general, are more accepting of supposedly diva behavior. She writes, "I have asked many Russians I know and they say for Russians there are no negative attachments made to the expression of emotion. To be openly disappointed, angry, frustrated (with oneself, of course) is simply emotional honesty. It is more natural to wear your heart on your sleeve, to state your successes and failures, and to name your foe."

In many interviews before the Games, Russian star Viktoria Komova identified the American women as her chief rivals and expressed the desire to beat them. By contrast, the U.S. women merely spoke in platitudes about wishing to do their best and hit all of their routines (which of course they did and defeated everyone).

Ryan Lochte was open about his desire to defeat Phelps, the greatest American swimmer, and wasn't maligned for it. This is what we expect from elite male athletes—confidence, even cockiness, and the desire to win. Phelps is the best and it was only natural that his competitors would want to take him down. These guys weren't labeled as divas.

The women at this level, regardless of their age, are the same as the men. They don't want to simply do their best. They want to win. So why aren't they permitted to openly express this? And when they fail to meet their own high standards, why can their only negative reaction be tears?

After winning a team silver, one gold, and two bronzes, Mustafina finished her competition at the Olympics as the most decorated gymnast in London. NBC might not like "divas," but the judges seem to have no problem with them. Here's hoping that at the next Games, "diva" won't be hurled as an insult against any female athlete who has the gall to exhibit anything other than sadness or joy. They should be free to smile, cry — and even get angry every once in awhile.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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U.S. Women’s Gymnasts Are Getting Serious Twitter Love from All the Important Celebrities [Gymnastics]

After the U.S. women's gymnastics teamwon gold Tuesday night, their Twitter accounts were inundated with congratulatory tweets from pretty much every famous person that matters. Those eager to get in line and offer social media high-fives to the victorious young women included President Obama, Oprah, Justin Fucking Bieber, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Bruce "The Reanimator" Jenner, and Snooki, because winning a gold medal at the Olympics isn't officially an accomplishment until at least three reality-TV stars publicly acknowledge it. The team was understandably thrilled about all of this because, well, they're kids and they just won Olympic gold.

For the complete list of tweet exchanges between gushing celebrities and the gymnasts, take a little gander at the litany machine machine that is Buzzfeed. Here, for your perusing convenience, are some of the most notable congratulations.

Lady Gaga was especially starstruck and then dispensed digital kisses:

@mckaylamaroney tweeted at me! Why didnt anybody tell me!!! DEAD. You were brilliant give all the girls a kiss for me

Wes Welker realized that people who get hit in the head for a living aren't the only tough humans:

I have a new respect for the women's gymnastics team. Those girls are TOUGH.

And the President played it straight, offering a very hearty thanks to the team for making America look awesome:

@Jordyn_Wieber, @GabrielleDoug, @Aly_Raisman, @McKaylaMaroney, @Kyla_Ross96: Congratulations! You've made us all proud. #TeamUSA

Meanwhile, Team U.S.A. continues to be really ecstatic about their new hardware.

The U.S. Women's Gymnasts Have Been Tweeting With Every Famous Person [Buzzfeed]

@doreeshafrir [Twitter]

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Haters Need to Shut the Hell Up About Gabby Douglas' Hair [Gymnastics]

As of yesterday, 16-year-old Gabby Douglas is officially an Olympic gold medalist. But some people watching her compete weren't focusing on her floor exercise — they were distracted by her hair.

Monisha Randolph, who runs a blog called Sporty Afros, has been dismayed with what she's seen:

So what's the big deal about Gabby's hair? From what I am reading on Facebook and Twitter, many African American women who are SITTING and WATCHING Gabby compete believe her hair is not "kept."

She needs some gel and a brush…

Someone needs to give her a hair intervention…

She has to "represent"…

And indeed, if you search "Gabby Douglas hair" on Twitter, you get quite a few results. A tragic amount, to be honest. As Randolph writes:

Have we forgotten that Gabby is competing at Olympics XXX? This is not America's Next Top Model that we're watching. These ladies are participating in a global athletic competition. And the last time I checked when you play a sport, you sweat. I know I do. And when a Black woman who has chosen to wear her hair straight begins to sweat, her hair will (not might) begin to revert back to its natural coily, curly, or kinky state. Does Gabby need to stop every five minutes to check her hair? No. When one experiences back-to-back intense workouts, that person learns what works best on their hair.

Randolph also points out: "A large number of Black women do not work out because of their beloved hairstyle. This is so sad and this is why Sporty Afros was created. We are here to help women with their workout hair care solutions and crush excuses such as 'I can't workout because of my hair.'"

Recently, a New York magazine writer called investing in the Naturally Curly website a "dumb" idea. This sparked a backlash; and as the blogger behind Black Girl With Long Hair writes, "I think there are people both within and outside of the black community who are still ignorant about the increasing influence of textured/natural hair on media, business and culture." There have also been controversies surrounding the hairstyles of First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters. (Even a Photoshopped mock-up of Michelle Obama with natural hair sparked a shitstorm of controversy.)

The point is that hair — black hair, especially — remains a hot-button issue. Hair is political, laden with subtext and meaning. Curly, textured hair — the kind a lot of black people have — is often called "wild." Straight hair — the kind a lot of white people have — is considered "polished" and "professional." We live in a culture where white people think it's okay to touch black people's hair. (It's not, FYI.) But for an athlete, the best hairstyle is the kind that lets you accomplish your goals. Even if she never won anything, her life is about her strength, flexibility and tumbling ability — not to mention dedication and focus. What's in her head, not what grows out of it. But since Gabby Douglas's hair did not stand in the way of a gold medal, it should be a non-issue.

Luckily, those critiquing Douglas's hair have drawn out voices of reason. There's a backlash, with many on Twitter defending the gymnast and scolding detractors:

A Black woman slandered Gabby Douglas, claiming 'she needs to get a perm first'. A 16 yr old repping THE COUNTRY & your focus is her hair?

Talking about Gabby Douglas' hair? At least it's hers. You got yours from one of Britain's Equestrian horses.

Gabby Douglas can fix her hair. Some of yall can fix yourselves and your lack of aspirations/accomplishments at 20 something.

Gabby Douglas is competing on a Gold Winning Team not a hair show. #KnockItOff

Gabby Douglas got real hair and real Olympic. All y'all got is weaves and envy.

Monisha's Minute: The Gabby Douglas Hair Controversy…Unwrapped [Sporty Afros]

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What Do Gymnastics, Orthodox Judaism and Feminism Have in Common? Me. [Gymnastics]

When people find out that you grew up as an observant Jew, a game I like to call "20 Questions About Orthodox Jews" is inevitable. Here are a few couple of prime examples: "Is it true that you guys have sex through a hole in a sheet?" Or: "Why do married women shave their heads and wear wigs?" And once, they find out that I took gymnastics classes about as often as I went to temple they ask, "How did you tumble in a skirt?"

Leaving aside the first two questions for the moment, I'll address the third. No, I didn't flip in a skirt. I wore leotard, which made gymnastics easier but Orthodox Judaism a lot more complicated. And for seven years, I worked through my athletic and religious issues — where else — but in the basement gym of a synagogue.

Every Sunday morning, I was coached by Nina, a former New York State champion on several events. A college student with braces and rubber bands, she was the most feared instructor in the gym, which was no mean feat since the rest were Russians. Nina dressed in army fatigues and pulled her baseball cap low. She stomped across the mat in shit kickers in spite of the fact that shoes were not permitted on the equipment. And when she yelled at our group, which was often, the entire gym stopped to watch.

Despite the harshness of her coaching style, we wouldn't have gone to any other group. Tis a far, far better thing to be pushed too hard than told to simply do your best, which is something Dickens would've written had he done gymnastics. Nina drilled us in the basics but then coached us through much more difficult skills, such as flyaway flips off the uneven bars and back walkovers on the balance beam. We didn't see Nina's demands in a malicious light. Rather, we understood her purpose — to make us better gymnasts.

I took whatever Nina said as gospel. When she advised me to do extra pushups and sit-ups at home in order to master a new skill on the uneven bars, an event that demands an excess of upper body strength, I did them every night. A few weeks later, I successfully performed it on the bars, which shocked her. I didn't understand why. "You told me that if I did pushups and sit-ups every night for a month, I would get the trick. So I did," I informed her.

"You really did them at home? Every night?" she asked, incredulous.

"Of course," I replied. For a coach who demanded such utter respect inside the gym, she seemed to have no expectations of her pupils once we were outside of her purview. She seemed oblivious to the power she wielded over me. My mother once yelled as we locked horns over the mess in my bedroom: "I bet if Nina came here and told you to clean it, you would!"

While that was probably true, I doubt I would've hero-worshipped Nina the way I did had she been encouraging housework. The reason I followed her Pied Piper-like over the vault and off of the balance beams was precisely because what she asked me to do didn't seem at all ladylike.

Unwittingly, Nina was showing me a different way to be female in the world. I could be strong to the point of being aggressive. My mother, who had been the first in her family to go to college, intellectually conveyed her ideas about feminism to me, insisting that if I got an education, I could do whatever I set my mind to. But what about whatever I set my body to?

Through gymnastics, feminism was communicated physically, which turned out to be much more powerful than its intellectual demonstration. If ideas about inferiority or separateness of women are rooted in our different bodies, then the best way I found to overcome these ideas was by using this same body to accomplish feats of strength that were not considered natural for us.

My teachers at school were always trying to rein me in physically. I was often chastised when I did cartwheels at the back of the room during recess because my skirt flew up as I turned on my hands. "It is not befitting a daughter of Israel," I was told.

They chose to ignore the strength and coordination and prowess it took to perform the skill. Rather, they sexualized it by characterizing it as indecent. Modesty in clothing and demeanor, I was taught at school, was supposed to accomplish the exact opposite. It was supposed to prevent women from becoming sexual objects, but its enforcers, in their zeal to get us to cover up, overlooked the other traits of the female body. My teachers and rabbis were the ones who sought to turn my body into an inanimate object, suitable only for gazing or averting one's eyes.

Nina was also teaching me a different method for interacting with men. Rather than deferring to them, she playfully challenged the male coaches to handstand or handspring or chin-up contests. Watching her compete with the men (and often win) reminded me of the years before I started wearing skirts full-time when I challenged the neighborhood boys to footraces, often outpacing them. I'd pump my legs and arms as hard as I could, until they were moving so fast I felt practically out of control, like a boulder picking up momentum as it rolls down a hill. The more out of control I felt, the more I became aware of my physical power. I was not circumscribed at all — not by fear, concerns about my gender, or by the suitability of my clothing.

However when I started the first grade, I stopped wearing pants. My yeshiva demanded that students dress modestly all of the time. Unlike Nina, my school's administration believed that its dominion extended beyond its doors.

Running in a skirt simply isn't the same. Even if it's flared enough so as not to shorten your stride, when you're in a skirt, you're always glancing down, worrying that the hem might fly up and expose your underwear or knees. Skirts impose self-consciousness, a keen awareness of the femaleness of your body. Anxiety and wind drag slowed me down and I started losing more races than I won.

Yet inside the gym, I continued to wear the skimpy attire of gymnasts. I acted as though the gym was outside the jurisdiction of Jewish law. Even if it was my own personal Green Zone, my behavior engendered no small amount of cognitive dissonance. I had been taught that modesty wasn't really context dependent — if I couldn't walk down the street in a leotard then I couldn't leap in one on the balance beam —but for the time being, I was protected by my relative youth. The full brunt of Jewish womanhood wouldn't hit me until I turned twelve and became a bat mitzvah. So I continued doing flips and tried not to think about what came after.

In the months leading up to my twelfth birthday, I desperately wanted to talk to Nina about what I should do. Should I quit the sport once I became too old to wear a leotard around men? Or should I continue doing the sport in defiance of the rules? I knew what her answer would be. She would tell me to stay with gymnastics, which is what I hoped to hear. Yet even in these imaginative conversations, I'd hear myself rejecting her permission. "But you don't understand," I'd say.

And she didn't. Though she coached me and some other Orthodox girls over the years and knew some of the rules we lived by, she didn't understand why they were important. To her, they were merely lists — things we could eat, things we couldn't; stuff we could do on Saturdays, stuff we couldn't do. She probably didn't see the big deal of moving one item from the forbidden to the permitted list. But in my reality, these items were more like threads in a quilt. If you tugged on one, you end up snagging the whole.

So when I turned twelve, I disappeared from the gym for a few weeks. I did not, however, stop thinking about gymnastics. I watched tapes of competitions I had recorded off of the television and tried my best to mimic if not the acrobatics of the elites then at least their choreography. I practiced my beam routine on the lines of the kitchen linoleum. My mother, after watching a few weeks of my self-directed practices, asked if I wanted her to take me back to the gym. I shook my head. "Do whatever you want," she said, returning to her coffee and newspaper.

Whatever I want. As if! I internally scoffed a la my newest pop culture messiah, Cher Horowitz. In abstaining from gymnastics, I wasn't doing what I wanted. I was doing what I believed I had to do. Rules, I reasoned, weren't there to help you honor deep-seated desires. If that were the case then I would be perpetually walking on my hands and eating ice cream right after a steak while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Instead I moped and started listening to Sarah McLachlan CDs. But before I completely and mournfully resigned myself to a future of overly sincere pop music and without a sport, I switched tacks. I got mad.

I started thinking about boys. I wasn't yet in the throes of puberty so these weren't sexual thoughts. Boys were still sort of an abstract concept to me, like calculus and space travel. How come, I wondered, didn't they have to worry about modesty? While there were proscriptions regarding the way men dressed, they were mere recommendations, like tipping your barista or flossing. They could play basketball regardless of who was present. Why was no one asking them to give up something they loved? (Though to be fair, they were taught not to masturbate, which was undoubtedly something they loved to do.) I knew that I was never going to be an Olympic champion or even a varsity athlete, but that's hardly the point. I wanted to see how far I could go. It's one thing to hit the brick wall of your own abilities whether they're physical or intellectual. It's quite another to be told what those limits are before you've had a chance to test them.

Once again, I felt like I was six years old, racing the boys down the block. This time, however, I didn't care about winning. I simply wanted the chance to play.

And so I returned to the gym dressed like the boys. I wore baggy clothing — loose fitting sweatpants and oversized T-shirts over my leotard. This, I reasoned, was more modest than the skintight clothing I used to wear. If not the letter of the law, I was trying to observe its spirit.

While Nina said nothing about my attire at first, she finally insisted I had to return to my skimpier clothing for safety's sake after the third time I slipped on the heel of my pants while on the beam. At this crossroads, I quickly took stock of the men in the gym. There were only a couple of coaches and a handful of male athletes, and the gymnasts were likely younger than thirteen. Without consulting the texts, teachers, or rabbis, I decided that it was okay for me to strip down to my leotard and shorts and do gymnastics just as I had a few months prior.

Though this was a relatively small decision that affected only ninety minutes out of the week, it was one of the first times in my life that I assessed what I knew of Jewish law and made my own choice. I had taken stock both of my love for gymnastics and the rules that governed my life outside of the gym. My passion for the sport had arisen organically, from within, whereas the law had been imposed on me from the outside without any regard for who I was as an individual. One felt right; the other I was told was right. On this occasion, I chose myself ahead of Judaism.

From that point, I started to trust myself at least as much as I did the male authority figures that parsed the Talmud and interpreted the law. After all, when you boil it down to basics, isn't that what feminism is about — women who insist on figuring out how to define themselves rather than being told by men who they are? Judaism told me one story about myself — about a modest, young woman who could be smart but not too aggressive about it, and ambitious but within certain limits. I, however, was discovering that this character outline was a work of fiction, at least in my case. I was intelligent and arrogantly wanted everyone to know it. My teachers would argue that I should work to curb these impulses and desires, but not because they were inherently bad. Rather they weren't appropriate for me as a woman. Had a man presented with my traits, he would've been handed the pulpit of a synagogue and a grant from a Jewish federation.

This doesn't mean that I won't listen to anyone, that there are no authority figures in my life to advise me in matters of faith and religion. I have a stable of mentors I trust, but none have earned my implicit trust merely because they hold rabbinic certification. "Because they are rabbis" — the answer my teachers frequently gave when I demanded to know why I had to follow their rules — which is really another of saying "because they said so." That line didn't work when my mother tried it on me at eight, and that was before I had even heard of Gloria Steinem.

However if Nina showed up on my stoop today, more than fourteen years after she last coached me, and ordered me to drop and give her twenty, I probably would. After all, the sages said, "Make yourself a rabbi." Mine just happened to be a Panamanian Catholic woman.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

This post is excerpted from Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess, available for Kindle. Republished with permission.

Image via Shmel/Shutterstock.

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