Redefining 'classy'
Feb. 27th, 2010 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineI love having athlete-crushes. I adore watching people who do things I can't even imaging doing, and I love the completely genuine, no-caveats respect I'm able to give truly great athletes. It's not a big thing- most of my crushes last for the length of an Olympics and are forgotten (except the truly astonishing, like Shaun White, or the ones that keep themselves in the public eye other ways, like Apollo Ohno), except in the few sports I follow on a yearly basis (basically just swimming and figure skating), where I'm utterly crazy about them for about two weeks per year.
But I absolutely do not fool myself into thinking they're anything but athlete-crushes. I don't know anything about these people, and my respect is narrowly about their physical abilities and dedication and mental toughness, perhaps leavened a little bit with soft-focus NBC human interest segments and a little bit of interview-charisma. I don't know enough about them for anything more than an athlete-crush, and I try to remember that.
But this Olympics? That's tough.
Context is this story, wherein a couple broadcasters say that Johnny is damaging to the sport, sets a bad example for little boys, and should be forced to take a gender test and compete with the women. A less serious and way more fabulous answer to it:
I love him. I love him utterly and without reservation.
I love the fact that he goes out of his way to say that he's not calling for them to be punished or fired for expressing their opinions (I think maybe they should be, but if he said that it would be a completely different news story, and the message he chose to focus on instead would have been lost).
I love him for saying that masculinity is what you make it, and I love the fact that (despite people calling him a coward for not going through a prescribed coming-out ritual that he doesn't feel necessary), he seems to really and truly think and care about exactly what his example is and what his message is both to people growing up like him and to the people who make that tough.
I love his ability to say "every little boy would be so lucky to be like me," not as braggadocio or swagger or conceitedness but as a simple and self-evident fact.
I love that, despite the media's determination to write a "Johnny the diva" narrative, I have rarely seen him be anything but calm, confident, self-assured, and respectful.
I just... *flails* Way to be a person, Johnny.
In other words, between a picture of Evan now appearing in the dictionary under "sportsmanship" and "graciousness," and Johnny being my hero and unbelievably classy, mens' figure skating this year has made it very hard for me to keep my athlete-crushes strictly athletic.
But I absolutely do not fool myself into thinking they're anything but athlete-crushes. I don't know anything about these people, and my respect is narrowly about their physical abilities and dedication and mental toughness, perhaps leavened a little bit with soft-focus NBC human interest segments and a little bit of interview-charisma. I don't know enough about them for anything more than an athlete-crush, and I try to remember that.
But this Olympics? That's tough.
Context is this story, wherein a couple broadcasters say that Johnny is damaging to the sport, sets a bad example for little boys, and should be forced to take a gender test and compete with the women. A less serious and way more fabulous answer to it:
I love him. I love him utterly and without reservation.
I love the fact that he goes out of his way to say that he's not calling for them to be punished or fired for expressing their opinions (I think maybe they should be, but if he said that it would be a completely different news story, and the message he chose to focus on instead would have been lost).
I love him for saying that masculinity is what you make it, and I love the fact that (despite people calling him a coward for not going through a prescribed coming-out ritual that he doesn't feel necessary), he seems to really and truly think and care about exactly what his example is and what his message is both to people growing up like him and to the people who make that tough.
I love his ability to say "every little boy would be so lucky to be like me," not as braggadocio or swagger or conceitedness but as a simple and self-evident fact.
I love that, despite the media's determination to write a "Johnny the diva" narrative, I have rarely seen him be anything but calm, confident, self-assured, and respectful.
I just... *flails* Way to be a person, Johnny.
In other words, between a picture of Evan now appearing in the dictionary under "sportsmanship" and "graciousness," and Johnny being my hero and unbelievably classy, mens' figure skating this year has made it very hard for me to keep my athlete-crushes strictly athletic.