The Olympic Mullet

I've been ranting about the messy hair epidemic that's plaguing women's gymnastics since the Olympic trials. (Although it's my favorite sport, I must admit I only really follow it every four years.) I hoped that with the fall of Nastia, the worst offender, the hairstyle would quickly go out of fashion before the real games began, but it seems the opposite happened. The sloppy trend has now spread to the heads of the majority of the U.S. women's team.

It's very confusing to me that these girls whose lives revolve around achieving perfection allow their hair to look so half-assed. Literally. It's a half ponytail that hasn't been pulled through to completion, flopping around slovenly, encouraging rebel layers to break free of color-coordinated scrunchies.

Or perhaps the hairstyle is akin to the "just rolled out of bed" or "beach hair" looks that actually require significant prep time. I wouldn't be surprised to catch the gymnasts staring at the mirror intently, pulling a few symmetrical strands through to create a very deliberate effect before the whole appalling 'do is sprayed down with industrial-strength hair glue.

But why?? I have to find a reason in order to get past how much I hate the lazy look and root for my country. So here's my explanation, and it's actually quite patriotic: It's the Olympic mullet -- athlete in the front, party in the back. It evokes great American traditions like NASCAR, fannypacks, arrogance -- and dominating the Olympics.


Photo credit: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2012/07/29/2137693/us-womens-gymnasts-to-start-on.html

Olympic Fever

I don't know anything about men's figure skating, but I am now totally rooting for Evan Lysacek. I also want him to be my new BFF.

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Craig’s Just Not That Into You

I’m trying to purchase a couple of Cubs tickets for friends that are coming to town the weekend after next, and it’s not going as well as I had hoped. When I first started cruising Craigslist last week, I was full of confidence, not even looking at posts asking for more than $100. I sent a breezy e-mail to a guy who had advertised six for $75 each, asking if he would sell two. When he didn’t respond, I wasn’t too concerned — plenty of fish in the sea.

But when I got back on the saddle today, my heart fell — decrease in posts, increase in prices. So not only did I contact someone selling tickets for more than $100, but my e-mail took on a different personality. “Are your tickets still for sale?” I asked, not wanting to be too presumptuous. Then after 10 minutes of checking my inbox, I began to fire off desperate e-mails to any applicable post I found.

I bristled when my boyfriend suggested offering $105 to someone asking for $110 per ticket. I’m in no position to bargain! Noone will even e-mail me back! My mood was souring; “tix” became “tickets” in my subject lines. I also started adding that I’d pay the asking price in case the seller was negotiating with others … or annoyed with people trying to bargain… I want them to like me best!

When I finally got a response, my spirits lifted … then quickly fell again. The message said the seller had already found a buyer, and they’re meeting tomorrow — but he’ll let me know if the deal falls through. So now I’m actually hoping for sloppy seconds.

Athletics imitate life

My ex forwarded me this article, “Sex and the Olympic city,” from the Times Online today. From the lead photo (my eyes!), I figured it was just going to be more of the usual inappropriateness that boys like to send around the Internet, especially on Fridays, but it’s actually really interesting. And it’s told in first person by former Olympian Matthew Syed, with personal anecdotes—my fav. Most of the story is simply an entertaining peephole into the Olympic Village, which apparently functions a lot like a co-ed freshman dorm during the first week of college. Who knew? I’ll never watch the Olympics quite the same way again…

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, however, the most interesting part of the article, to me, was quickly brushed over:

“It is worth noting an intriguing dichotomy between the sexes in respect of all this coupling. The chaps who win gold medals - even those as geeky as Michael Phelps - are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes. There is something about sporting success that makes a certain type of woman go crazy … But - and this is the thing - success does not work both ways. Gold-medal winning female athletes are not looked upon by male athletes with any more desire than those who flunked out in the first round. It is sometimes even considered a defect, as if there is something downright unfeminine about all that striving, fist pumping and incontinent sweating. Sport, in this respect, is a reflection of wider society, where male success is a universal desirable whereas female success is sexually ambiguous. I do not condone this phenomenon, merely note it.”

Nice observation, Matthew! I wished he would go on, in his deliciously British prose, but instead he starts writing about athletes’ smoking habits. And the “certain type of woman” comment—I won’t even get into that. So it looks as though we can add one more either/or to female existence: Olympic Champion OR Village Vamp. Meanwhile, Phelps gets to have it all.

Little girls in pretty boxes

I realized tonight while watching the Olympics that I apparently know nothing about my “favorite sport”—women’s gymnastics. (I guess that tells you something about how much I like sports...) First of all, I was completely confused by the new scoring system. Second, I guess the Romanians suck now.

I found the commentators’ conversation about the Romanian team almost more annoying than the F.I.G.’s confiscation of the perfect 10. Basically, the two reasons they gave for Romania's downfall were: 1) Nadia Comaneci no longer inspires young girls (vague and random explanation I didn’t understand until I Googled the issue and found this one, lonely and fairly old article), and 2) the gymnasts are no longer the uber-disciplined robots they used to be.

To elaborate on the second explanation, first one commentator reminisced about how the old Romanian teams never stopped working, comparing them with disdain to the current team, who she apparently saw chatting around the chalk box during practice. Gasp! What lazy wastes of spandex! Then the other commentator mentioned after one of the gymnasts fell and must have been hugged or something by her coach (I was Googling and didn’t see) that in the old days, a gymnast who messed up would never get a high five or hug or anything from her coach (perhaps she would just get an electric shock?). Then he quickly added something like, “I’m not saying that’s the way it should be—I’m just saying…” as an afterthought. Hm.

According to the CHINAdaily.com article I found, Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang, Romanian coaches of the last Olympic team, “faced criticism over their iron discipline and allegations of psychological abuse and demanding cuts from gymnasts' prize money.” Hm. I’m not saying child abuse and exploitation don’t produce champions—I’m just saying… it’s pretty f-ed up.

The big game

College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now, by Lynn Peril, is full of amusing excerpts from old-school prescriptive literature and magazine columns telling girls how to behave—mostly to succeed in the spheres of popularity and husband hunting. Sort of a pop culture history of women’s education in America, it also says a lot about how dating has changed through the years.

I just read a section entitled “‘More Rules Than a Prison’—Football for the Disinterested,” and found it particularly entertaining:

"For disinterested parties, sitting through a game could certainly seem as long as several life sentences. Articles in magazines like Co-ed and Mademoiselle explained the game of football ... to casual spectators who didn’t want to look like fools in front of dates. While spontaneous enjoyment might occur with knowledge of the rules, learning them was usually presented as a mere expedient to keeping one’s date happy.”

Peril’s references in this section are from the 196os, but it took me back a little less far, to my last relationship. In addition to being thankful that girls no longer have to do football homework to prepare for dates, I was thinking how thankful I am that I no longer have to spend Sundays pretending to watch Packer games and apologizing for being more interested in reading a book than discussing how long we will have to wait for Brett Favre to run for President.

But then I kept reading:

“If the game didn’t end the way a boy wanted it to, it was important for a girl to adjust her mood to his—he wouldn’t ‘appreciate [her] high spirits’ while he suffered the agony of defeat. In such situations, it was important to remember that football wasn’t just a game. To think otherwise might mean going dateless until after the play-offs.”

And that took me back even less far, to when Packer fans had high Super Bowl hopes this past season. I watched their last game with one of my best friends at a bar in Madison, Wis. I went for the beer and cheese curds—and because she had had a rough week and made me promise I wouldn’t give her a hard time about wanting to watch the game. Plus I thought it would be fun to bandwagon on the revelry if the Packers won, and I believe they were supposed to…

But as the game wore on and the Packers played worse and worse, it became apparent that they were going to lose, and I started praying that they would somehow pull it off, not because I like the Packers, but because my friend’s mood started to scare me and because I wanted the party to keep going after the game. But of course they lost. My friend popped out of her chair, threw her arms up, yelled “Where’s the waitress?? We need the check!!!!” and started putting on her jacket. I still had a third of a beer left.

I tried to be understanding of her feelings (even though I seriously just don’t get sports fanaticism), but at the same time tried to lift her spirits and somehow managed to convince her to stay out and go to our favorite bar with me. Because here in the 21^st century, that’s what good friendships are all about: compromise. And never going to the bar angry.