THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120046
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
JOAN RYAN'S ``Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters'' (Doubleday, 243 pp., $29.95) is a fast and furious exposure and condemnation of yet another cutthroat, winning-is-everything American sports subculture.
Through anecdotes derived from nearly 100 interviews and a decade of reporting, Ryan, a San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist, stridently debunks the Cinderella myth that attends elite female gymnasts and figure skaters, who compete in sports where lighter, immature bodies excel. In revealing the abuse and exploitation behind the pigtails and mascara, Ryan makes a powerful statement for reform.
Image, she convincingly argues, is everything for these Olympic hopefuls, so much so that for years - ever since 85-pound pixie Olga Korbut captivated the 1972 Olympic audience and transformed gymnastics from a women's to a girls' sport - it has concealed tragic secrets. Many, if not most, of the top gymnasts, whose greatest fear is puberty, suffer eating disorders; weakened bones; stunted growth; debilitating - and in some cases, fatal - injuries; depression and alarmingly low self-esteem. To receive intensive training from elite coaches, most girls drop out of school, or attend by correspondence, and become isolated from their peers and their families.
Though their injuries are fewer, figure skaters, too, must conform to the ``fairy princess'' ideal to be successful and can never be too thin or too girlish. Although they are athletes and not usually socially skilled, champion skaters must exude beauty, glamour and sophistication: The competition between Ice Princess-heir apparent Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, a ``girl from the other side of the tracks,'' tells it all.
Like the elite gymnasts, the champion skaters are getting younger: In 1993, 13-year-old Michelle Kwan became the youngest skater to win a gold medal in U.S. Olympic Festival history. A year later, 5 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier, Kwan struggled with triple jumps she once had landed so easily. Another pixie star, 12-year-old, 68-pound Tara Lipinski, waited in the wings.
Ryan spreads plenty of blame around for the damage done to these girls, taking to task greedy, ambitious parents; greedy, abusive coaches; greedy, exploitative agents; greedy, callous judges and greedy, negligent sports officials. Among the worst culprits profiled are parents who virtually sell their daughters' souls, ignoring cries of pain, pleas to quit and obvious signs of bodily danger, for a possible Olympic payoff. The mother who covered her 10-year-old daughter's chicken pox with makeup so the girl could compete in a gymnastics meet strikes this epitome. (The makeup dribbled down the feverish girl's body in streaks, and she was asked to leave.)
Coaches rival parents in culpability, the worst among them preferring to berate and humiliate their pupils, to dismiss their injuries, forcing them to perform hurt, and thus to improve their skills through hard-knocks rather than praise.
A common insult leveled by coaches, such as Rumanian Bela Karolyi, who produced champions Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, and judges, one of whom allegedly told Retton that he wished he could deduct a half-point for ``that fat hanging off your butt,'' is that a girl, usually weighing between 80 and 95 pounds, is ``too fat.'' Gymnast Christy Heinrich believed this - and, therefore, that she was worthless - until she died in 1994, weighing less than 50 pounds.
Ryan treats the heartbreak of anorexia and bulimia in the context of individual girls' lives, but also within gymnastics history, thus making the American cultural obsession with unrealistic female beauty - thin and young - seem even more reprehensible. In 1976, the average American female gymnast was 17 1/2 years old, 5-foot-3 1/2, and weighed 106 pounds; in 1992, the average girl was 16, 4-9 and 83 pounds.
``Little Girls in Pretty Boxes'' is such a damning indictment of girls' gymnastics and figure skating that one wonders if the traumas that the champions undergo can ever be worth their sacrifice. Conspicuously absent here are happy voices. I would have liked to have heard from the ``success stories,'' from Shannon Miller, America's sweetheart at the '92 Summer Games, or Retton, the most commercially popular gymnast; from '92 gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi or Kerrigan. (Figure skating bronze medalist Debi Thomas, 28, divorced and now studying medicine, says her 1988 Olympic experience was ``like one of the tortures in Dante's Inferno.'')
Perhaps there are no happy voices here because there are no happy voices. Certainly that is Ryan's implication. If so, that is more than a sad commentary for what appear to be the most lovely and joyful of female sports. That is a disgrace. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Ryan reveals the abuse and exploitation behind the ponytails and
mascara in her new book.
by CNB