Most Americans think about gymnastics about once every 4 years, because of the summer olympics. During the summer olympics, we all gather around to watch Amateur American Athletes (also known as AARP) be feel-good ambassadors to the rest of the countries by winning more medals than any of them.
There are lots of different ways to compete in the olympics. There is field and track, and there is soccer. There is basketball, and baseball, and golf, and tennis. There are a variety of unarmed combat events, such as wrestling, Judo, Sumo, boxing, kickboxing, shadowboxing, MMA, WWF, and KICKBOOTY. There is shooting, curling, swimming, diving, snorkeling, weightlifting, there is rowing, racing, polo, bicycle riding, eating, and belching. However, if you watch on TV, you will never get to watch any of these fascinating and unique sporting events, because about 85% of the olympic coverage is focused on 16-year-old girls who are all 4 feet tall and due to genetic rarities (and, in the case of Germany and China, male hormone therapy) can do flips and the splits while they dance around to music.
You have never seen many of the events that I am discussing, and some of you did not even know that weight-lifting and swimming were a part of the olympics. You will never get to see them, I am sorry, because you will be shown a steady diet of the 16-year-old pixie girls dancing and doing their flips.
Would you like to watch some wrestling? Some belching, or rowing? TOUGH BEANS, LOSER! WATCH SOME GYMNASTICS INSTEAD!
As you can see, I am less than sanguine about the whole olympics=pixie flipping dancing-girls situation.
Back in the olden days, olympics competitors were all male, and they actually didn’t wear clothes while they competed, and the only two things the naked males did were race and wrestle. However, NBC did a poll on this issue, and determined that most people did not want to watch naked males fighting or running, and so they branched out: naked males shooting bows and arrows, naked males ice skating, naked males playing volleyball, but ratings continued to be flat. So, NBC made the males start wearing clothes in 1977, and then, in the 1983 olympics, NBC had females (clothed) competing for the first time.
However, the females were unable to compete with the males in most of the events. In weightlifting, the women would hoist 200 pounds over their head, and then the males (back then steroids were a regular aspect of the olympics) would come out and hoist Peterbilts over their heads, and so the women were not winning any medals. Ratings remained flat. Guys wanted to watch nascar, and women did not want to watch other women lose. Then came feminism, and in 1989, Gloria Steinem burned a bust of Arnold Schwarzenegger using her bra as kindling on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Then came Title 9, which is a law that says that women, if they can’t compete with men, should have the option to just make up their own stupid sports, where men won’t be able to compete at all.
Thus, in 1991, gymnastics were debuted in the Pyongyang Olympics, and we’ve never looked back. American women, who don’t care one tiny bit about real sports like football, will all tune in en mass, 190 million strong, to the olympics while the pixie flipping dancing is happening, and then, if the announcers even mention field hockey, all 190 million will change channels instantly. Of course, NBC knows when you’re watching their channel, because they have little devices in your TVs, so they give the women what they want. Men can’t keep up with the tidal wave of estrogen, so they just give up and switch back to nascar.
Sometimes a clear perspective, complete with accurate facts, can give us a sense of how to interpret the world around us, which is why I gave you an abbreviated historical backdrop to bring you to where we are today, which is the current American idea that the olympics=gymnastics, and gymnastics=pixie girls dancing and flipping to music, and I think we can blame Gloria Steinem.
You might feel that I am exagerating, but I am not. Last time the olympics were on, I watched for a while, and all I saw was pixie girls dancing and flipping to mucus. I mean music.
I wanted Anna to play a sport that involved, at minimum, some sort of ball. Shoot, I would have bought her a Peterbilt, if she’d have shown any interest in weightlifting . . . get her started young, and she’d have been fine.
What does Ashlei do? She waits until I am out of the house, and then she goes sneaking off to some gymnastics facility, and signs both girls up.
Immediately, before the first class, it was obvious that Abbey is not genetically wired for gymnastics. Even I could see this. However, after only a couple of weeks, the head of the gymnastics facility came up to Ashlei and told her that they wanted to put Anna in an advanced class. The advanced class, of course, costs more money. Everything about gymnastics costs money. And takes time, lots of time.
Months passed.
Now, we go to meets, which will be the topic of my next blog, sometime later this week. Probably Friday.
