Why me?
I've been a gymnast for eighteen years. When I was a gymnast in middle school and high school, I trained under coaches from Russia who ran their practices like Russian boot camps. Every day, we were required to be weighed in front of everyone so we could be exposed for whether we lost weight or gained weight. Our workouts would be based off of our weight performance and whether or not we remained the same or lost weight. If we gained weight, we were required to do an intensive weight loss warmup circuit until we lost enough weight for their liking. Because of this, I went through a lot of personal body shaming instances and have come to realize the strict lens that gymnasts are put under. In addition to that, the Russian training regime included a specific appearance standard to be met. We were required to wear our hair in a slick back bun with no loose hairs falling out, a modest amount of makeup, and a leotard that was strategically manufactured in light colors so we would look bigger if we had gained any weight. Essentially, the standard was to look like a starving robot.
I never quite understood the gymnastics appearance standard until I looked around one day at a competition and noticed every girl looking just like me. I was fourteen at the time and just started realizing the disgustingly thin body ideal we as gymnasts were held to. My ribs popped out of my ugly ass white leotard just like the next girl and we began to be shamed for wanting to wear training bras from Justice and Limited too because growing boobs meant we were "gaining weight". Our normal was abnormal.
Once I realized how messed up this was, I rebelled. And by rebel, I mean I let myself be healthy. I started eating enough to fill me up, refused to step on a scale, and ultimately, against my will, grew boobs and became happy about it. I was free from their irrational standard.
But they weren't the only ones with an irrational standard. Yes, they were my coaches and had standards they wanted us to meet. Yet, they weren't the ones giving us scores based on our performance. In that regard, they were powerless. When I came to college, I realized that the judging in collegiate gymnastics stemmed highly from appearance ideals created through the gymnastics world. Who you were, your history in the sport, and how you looked determined a lot of your scoring and personal accomplishments.
I initially became very aware of my body insecurity through competing every weekend in a leotard on TV in front of thousands of people. Although having escaped the Russian dictatorship before my collegiate career, I still struggled a lot with my personal appearance and the appearance of others. I noticed that very skinny gymnasts, unhealthily skinny at that, were receiving higher scores on routines that had evident mistakes. I started realizing that gymnasts on social media with thousands of followers got scored higher because they're extremely pretty and met this standard that people believed gymnasts were supposed to look like. Thin. Hot. Ideal. Gymnasts who hiked their leotards up their asses started getting really high scores. The tanner the better. Airbrushing makeup was encouraged. But, I was doing just the same gymnastics as these girls, if not sometimes better, and I was rarely rewarded.
I'm not the only one who has noticed how people's bodies and appearance began to potentially alter how they were viewed and judged by the officials. Recently, judging biases have become a very prominent aspect of college gymnastics. People have started noticing the biases associated with appearance and have begun to call judges out for their unfair scoring. Appearance and body ideals seem to be aspects of gymnastics that alter how judges view routines, even though that is not a viable reason for deducting.
Although not proven, I believe that through watching hours upon hours of gymnastics, judging biases has to do with the body appearance of the athletes, as well as their general appearance and likeness. And without even knowing, or admitting to it, judges are using body appearance and general physicality preferences to judge athletes.
So, why does this matter?
Human beings are programmed to be judgmental. Our minds immediately go to a place of judgment when we see someone we don't know. We'd all be lying if we said we didn't do this. Our world has created ideals that we feel everyone is held to and required to maintain. My interest in how we as people judge the body begins with an examination of gymnastics judging and how, even in a sport where scores are meant to be based strictly on skills and value, appearance and societal ideals generate subliminal judgment from the perspective of the judges. And that happens even when it comes to meeting new people in our lives or going in for a job interview or first date. We are always judging.
I first want to discuss the basics of what an official judge looks for in gymnastics. By providing a basic discussion of judging, I hope that you can understand how not important someone's appearance and general attraction is when determining the athlete's score for a routine.