I grew up never thinking about, observing, or participating in sports. I hated gym class, couldn’t play tennis, never imagined skiing, and didn’t learn to swim until I was an adult. Such activities were never fostered in my immigrant Jewish culture. Academics were the only thing that required excellence.
Consequently, I’ve never paid much attention to athletes or the Olympics. But this year, along came Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Yusra Mardini, and the women who traded in their required G-strings for shorts or long leotards. That caught my feminist attention.
This year’s female athletes join tennis firsts Serena Williams and Billie Jean King, track and field Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and the great Babe Didrikson-Zaharias who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball, track and field, winning a gold in the 1932 Olympics. These women didn’t just demonstrate what women athletes could achieve. Each in their own way stood up to pressure, sexism, and misogyny just as today’s stellar female athletes are doing.
Naomi Osaka, who dropped out of the French Open tennis tournament earlier this year, explained why, in a recent TIME Magazine article. Anxious about press events she said, “It’s okay to not be okay, and it’s okay to talk about it. I wanted to skip press conferences to exercise self-care and preservation of my mental health. I stand by that. Athletes are human.”
For that decision, she was fined $15,000 for not doing media events, affecting the profit margins of companies that supported her.
Simone Biles, four-time gold medalist in the 2016 Olympics, caused a lot of sponsors and fans to become hysterical and verbally abusive over her decision to withdraw from several events this year. With 19 gold medals to her credit, the expectations had become unbearable for the 24-year old athlete, who along with other Olympic gymnasts, was sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar, the doctor for the American gymnastic team now serving a life sentence for sexual abuse.
As tensions mounted, Biles dramatically difficult routine became dangerous, so she decided to withdraw. She was then accused of being weak, unable to take the pressure, and more by would-be jocks who likely found it difficult to bend over to tie their shoes. Biles also ended her sponsorship with Nike this year to go with a smaller, less demanding and more supportive brand. “It wasn’t about my achievements, it’s what I stood for and how they would help me use my voice for females and kids,” she said.
Biles’s withdrawal opened the way for 18-year old Suni Lee, the first Hmong-American Olympian to win the gold and two other medals this year, a feat she accomplished after being out of action for two months last year due to injuries, the death of two relatives from Covid, and the accident that paralyzed her father in an accident. Stunned by her magnificent win, she said proudly, “I'm super proud of myself for sticking with it and believing in myself.”
Yusra Mardini is not as well known as Biles or Lee, but her story is equally compelling. She fled the Syrian war as a teenager, swam for three hours in the sea while steering her sinking boat to safety, and saved every passenger onboard. Then she walked from Greece to Germany. This year, she competed in the 100-meter Butterfly swim at the Olympics, revealing that even without winning a medal, women like these athletes are strong, self-respecting, and determined.
They were joined by Olympic women who refused to accept the sexualization in gymnastics by rejecting bikini cut underwear that likely induced the world’s worst wedgie with the required “close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg.” Punishment time again: Team Germany earned their $1500 Euro fine from the International Handball Association for wearing shorts, which men’s teams wear.
The blogosphere went viral as women protested that kind of misogynistic nonsense. As one of them posted, “Biles set aside her dreams in order to do the right thing for her teammates and her country. I see a lot of dudes who look like they’d break a sweat opening a bag of Doritos mocking Biles for being ‘weak’. She could crack their spines with her calves and do a full floor routine afterwards [but] she’s too good a person to challenge them to a fight.”
Another said, “It’s hard to not feel feminist. It’s hard not to be angry and disgusted. Society refuses to acknowledge a woman’s worth. The system continues to fail women, even ones as outstanding as these. It’s time to get mad.”
Even if the women in this year’s Olympics never compete or win another medal again, they will remain gold star champions to every woman who has ever cleared her own hurdles and landed on her feet, hands in the air, the smile of achievement on her face. No longer will competent, strong women give their bodies to male titillation and sexual fantasy, or to corporations who view them as simply commodities, or to imposed pregnancies. Along with women who have aspired us anew, sisters in sport, we are reclaiming our power and our legitimacy in every arena.
That makes every one of these astounding athletes, and all women, winners.
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Elayne Clift writes about women, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.