The women influenced by Simone Biles’ example, including the 14.4 million who watched her “Get Ready With Me” make-up application (I didn’t know women athletes wore make-up!) include the girls working hard in high school gyms like Santa Fe’s Chase Jackson, the world’s top shot putter, who had already achieved all-world when she was at high school in Los Alamos.
Both these women would have been outcasts in the world I knew as a teenager, too tall (Jackson is 5’11”), too heavily muscled, too determined. There were several promising girls in field hockey and basketball at my high school, but the prohibition against appearing to try too hard (what if you fail and are humiliated?), against height and physical strength (at 5’7″ I felt like an oddity), against sweating (“horses sweat, men perspire, women glow”), against standing out in any way disruptive to the cement-hard conventionality of the 1950’s (and we only played basketball on a half court!) meant that none of the gifted girls I knew would go on to greatness.
Most impressive to me is that Biles has not been ashamed to admit to the kind of mental struggles that afflict all of us, taking time off to attend to her emotional well-being and daring the largely male sportscasters to demean her.
This is a healing example for all of us, and reinforces the wisdom of a recent regulation prohibiting girls younger than sixteen to compete in this way. A conscious protection of the needs of young girls to achieve a certain level of maturity both physically and emotionally first proves that we—or at least some of us!—are beginning to take girls and women seriously.
I want to congratulate not only Biels and Jackson but the unrecognized women who initiated and supported the programs that allow women athletes to bloom.
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