Opinion: She’s one of the most remarkable Olympians ever: Supernaturally focused, generously collegial and a refreshing mould-buster in women’s gymnastics. But Simone Biles often has to take time out of her critical competition build-ups to defend … her hair.
“Please don’t come for me about my hair,” she pleaded on X during her latest medal spree in Paris, pre-empting what indeed did come: sniffy comments about what, by some people’s lights, was a touch of frizz.
The judges don’t take points off for that. But some spectators seemed to think Nasa should be standing by with technology to ensure budge-proof mascara and Pantene gloss. Because, like it or not, these were also the hair and make-up Olympics.
It’s probable most viewers were appreciative, to the point of marvelling, that so many athletes managed to look so insanely glamorous. As if it’s not enough to be able to propel oneself metres into the air, run hundreds of metres in a trice or heft the equivalent of an industrial freezer over one’s head or halfway across a paddock, some of these deities do so with flawless eyeliner and lustrously tumbling locks.
A joyful, celebratory touch? You’d have thought so, but also curiously irksome for some. A CNN commentator was sacked after remarking archly that an Australian women’s swim team were mucking about doing their make-up. They’d won gold, but he implied they were just, sigh, typical primping girlies.
Athletes who eschewed cosmetics were also pilloried online. Could they not have made an effort? Would it kill them to even out that blotchy skin tone that’s so jarring to witness after someone’s run a marathon, swum through chlorine like a porpoise or completed an hour’s rampage on a playing field? Maaate – your nose is red and your chin’s shiny. There are products for that.
A Fox News commentator during the Olympics in London famously typified this attitude, saying medal-winners owe it to fans to look good. The Olympics, he added, were “all about” product placement.
Apparently, if you couldn’t get a blur primer sponsor or a gig as a Botox ambassador, you just weren’t putting in the effort.
Again, Biles seems to cop it the worst. Teen Vogue quoted recent X posters: “I love Simone Biles down, but Sissy, why didn’t you gel up/pin up your hair like you’re at the Olympics?” And, “Simone Biles is an undeniable talent but at this point, I have to believe that her messy hair is A CHOICE.”
Other gymnasts were chided for enhanced fingernails, this being the one avenue of self-expression allowed in the sport’s cookie-cutter appearance regime. Shudder. How could they function with those talons? (Hint: just watch them. One even joked they helped her performance, as she sure didn’t want to break one by getting a move wrong.)
Woe betide those athletes who opted to bolster their precarious incomes. Bronze-winning Canadian pole-vaulter Alysha Newman galvanised internet pearl-clutchery when she had the effrontery to twerk for joy. Worse, she derives an income from OnlyFans – a site where people subscribe to, shall we say, appreciate someone privately. How dare she trade on her spectacular looks as well as her athletic ability?
Allowing for ethical fishhooks in letting strangers pay to get an eyeful of you, her view is, if some people are going to perve at attractive athletes – and they are – why should she not get some compensation?
Need it be noted that almost all the appearance-shaming was of female athletes, who achieved Olympic participation parity with men for the first time?
One day, when, say, the All Blacks have to defend their fuchsia nail art or blatantly un-fillered crow’s feet, we’ll have achieved a – dubious – true parity.
