Here we go again.
This time it’s not evil bloggers-while-female, it’s evil gymnast-while-female.
McKayla Maroney is not going to win any medals for congeniality. As a member of the U.S. gymnastics team’s “Fab Five,” she’s the one Least Likely to Crack a Smile. But if you think that automatically makes her a sore loser, or worse, that it justifies calling a 16-year-old girl a brat or a bitch, please report to the nearest rock and crawl under it.
Oh don’t be silly, any fule kno it’s every woman’s job – yes even if she’s a girl of 16! – to look Nice and approachable and cuddly and non-threatening. If she fails in that duty it’s perfectly fine to shout at her and call her a bitch and a cunt.
At the opposite end of the age range, the queen got the same kind of crap for failing to grin for five hours straight.
Police those women and their scary faces, or else.
That face, that tough, steely look, has been a wide-open opportunity for would-be comics to poke fun at Maroney’s “Oh, hell no” countenance, and to riff on her “mean girl” persona. She’s had entire galleries devoted to her “bitch face,” which also serves as her unofficial nickname. She’s been a “fool” and a “brat” and a “baby,” a “snobby,” “pissy” “diva.” Well, what do you expect from the same civilization that also brought you the endless ragging on Gabby Douglas’ hair?
Nothing. I expect fucking nothing from that civilization.
Maroney isn’t the naturally smiling, ebullient Olympian. She doesn’t exude the warmth of Sanya Richards-Ross or outdoorsy ease of Kerri Walsh. Nothing about her serious, controlled persona says, “Hey, world, love me!” That’s a difficult thing for a lot of people in the world to accept in a female.
And that’s where they get us, right there. Intensity and focus are not allowed if they interfere with the cuddly – and you don’t want cuddly people who can’t focus in serious subjects like physics and engineering and computer science and math and philosophy, so better nudge the women out by making fun of them and policing their faces and tits and clothes all the time.
Bitch face indeed.
You will be pleased to know that Allison Schmitt and Missy Franklin (American swimmers) reportedly beam twenty-four hours a day presumably even under water.
I feel like a broken xmas ornament. Must b y I’m such a “failure.” But, hey, with my rotten teeth, do they REALLY want to see ME smile??
Just to see what the hell they’re even talking about, I went and looked at that gallery. Not that it matters one way or the other, as she’s a freaking elite athlete, not a receptionist, but in most of those pictures she actually appears to be making an effort to smile. Is the problem that it appears to take effort? So since her face doesn’t automatically crack wide open at the sight of a gazillion cameras, she’s a ballbuster? Male person here, but I sure know if I were under that kind of scrutiny 24/7 while trying to maintain the focus that kind of intense performance must require, I wouldn’t even be making half the effort she is.
The Queen? I thought the stone-faced royalty bit was standard. The rest of the criticisms are equally absurd, of course, but of public figures who aren’t expected to smile very often, reigning monarchs are right up there.
Ah but the queen is a woman, you see.
What? I don’t even. Commenting on someone’s attitude or demeanor is fair game, but this is ridiculous.
She competed with a broken foot, too. That’s pretty hardcore.
They forgot “ice queen”.
I remember being out for dinner once when I was fifteen with my mom and brother and sister. I was sitting there at our table, gazing out the window, not really thinking about anything in particular, when my brother shreiked “you look like such a SNOB!” I had no idea what I did to bring that on. I wasn’t thinking snobby thoughts, I’m not known for snobbery. I was just sitting there, minding my own business.
I’ve been watching the Olympics on Canadian TV. When Gabby Douglas finished her floor routine in the individual all-around, she smiled broadly and put her arms in the air.
Commentator One: Big smile! Plenty to smile about with that routine.
Commentator Two: She never STOPS smiling.
Camera shows Douglas, clearly not smiling. In fact, she hardly ever smiles except when acknowledging the crowd.
Later the same Commentator Two gushes about how Douglas is like “a child…just playing.”
I don’t know about you but Gabby Douglas strikes me as an extremely focussed young woman. Like the other younger gymnasts and female athletes in general, she’s lean and mean. Not childlike.
Really, they can’t help themselves sometimes.
I don’t remember all this criticism of women in previous Olympic Games. Is this new or was I just oblivious?
Gah, in the gallery on newnownext, she seems to be smiling in most pictures, except the ones where she is deep in concentration.
I certainly don’t think she has any obligation to smile all or any of the time, but showing her smile and captioning every picture with the word bitch is just fucking childish.
They might as well have decided to call her smile mysterious, or call it a Mona Lisa smile.
I’m reminded of this conversation from Mass Effect, I really don’t see how grinning like an idiot would help her performance in any way.
OB, you’re just jealous because the Magic Alien Smile Zombies never visited you at night for a makeover…
I can’t see what they’re going on about. She has a beautiful face, and I can’t see anything nasty, just fun, absorption, mischief perhaps. Clearly, people have been drawn to the fact that her features are unusually elfin and her expressions are lively, and have decided that she is a nice easy target for their morbid hatred of women. Anything different, kill it, anything female, kill it, anything different and lively and female, kill it, anything young and vulnerable and an easy target… Can these cowardly bullies ever be shamed, I wonder? They really do think that they own women, don’t they? What else can explain it? Their arrogance is so colossal. Whatever happened to the idea of adults supporting and helping and encouraging and guiding the young?
The ones who try to knock out eachother’s kneecaps with crowbars?
“Everything happens for a reason”?
Lovely sentiment.
That’s how she looked to me – intense and focused. Why any adult would think that’s a negative is beyond me. But I have a guess…
callistacat:
My first thought on reading this was: to your brother, snob = not paying attention to him. Now, I don’t honestly think that’s a big problem for a child. We all pretty much start out that way. Part of becoming an adult is realizing that you are not the center of other people’s worlds; we are not born with that understanding, we must learn it.
Which leads me back to the Olympics, and people getting upset about a young woman gymnast’s intense, not-smiling-for-the-camera expression. And it seems to me that this is a lot like your young brother, in that what they are really upset about is that she has given a higher priority to her ‘job’ than to them, the audience. If she’s not smiling for the camera, that means she has put her own upcoming performance ahead of me, the vewier, and what I want to see. And that, I think, is what is so offensive to some (immature) viewers.
I have mixed feelings about this part.
It’s precisely the Queen’s job to be a figurehead, a spokesmodel, and the public face of the U.K.
Especially for something like the Olympic opening ceremonies, when Britain is hosting, she should put a whole lot of effort into acting interested in the proceedings and pleased to be there.
Not as a woman, but as a figurehead monarch.
If she can’t do the job, they should get somebody else to stand in for her, who’s a better actress. (Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, maybe?)
Or she should just resign the job of being a figurehead and spokesmodel, i.e., abdicate the monarchy because she’s unwilling or unable to fulfill the primary duty of a figurehead monarch.
The problem with that is that it would make the idiot Prince Charles the new spokesmodel for the U.K., and he’s just awful.
I do have some sympathy for her hanging on despite her unwillingness or inability to do the job well, but I don’t think criticizing her demeanor at public events is necessarily out of line.
Of course, when stricter standards are applied because she’s a queen rather than king, that sucks hugely.
And of course, expecting female athletes to smile pretty is just evil. That’s not their job.
When I was in high school I was a competitive gymnast. My biggest problem with it was my coaches telling me to smile all the time. We worked out with boys team quite a lot. I never heard anyone telling them to smile…
I’m going to be the annoying person pointing out that men DO get this too – just look at all the grief Andy Murray gets for being ‘a dour Scot’ and not smiling enough. I saw plenty of comments on Twitter last week when he was playing in the mixed doubles along the lines of ‘OMG, he is actually smiling!!’
Some people are just idiots.
Also, everyone I know thinks it’s hilarious that the Queen looked stony-faced and bored through much of the opening ceremony. The Bond skit got her a whole lot of credit in the sense of humour department – I haven’t heard anyone criticise her.
Well there’s something in that – I myself find her expression pretty amusing.
But on the other hand, I also know that she considers it a burden that her face in repose happens to look “cross” so that she has to choose between looking cross and having to smile constantly. I totally sympathize because my face is the same way.
But yes, her apparent grimness was pretty funny.
Apparently it’s called a ‘resting face’, and a lot of people have a ‘resting face’ that makes them look miserable when they’re just *not smiling*.
Funnily enough I remember another British tennis player with this problem – he was one of those flukey Brits who had never won a big match before but got given a Wimbledon wildcard, and then took Sampras to five sets and had a break point in the fifth before losing and dissapearing back to the Challengers and never being heard of again. While playing he looked *so* miserable, it was really remarkable, his mouth was literally downturned like a sadface smilie, but in the interview afterwards he was BEAMING, he was the happiest man I’d ever seen after losing a tennis match. His smile really transformed his face. I can’t for the life of me remember his name….
But on the other hand, I also know that she considers it a burden that her face in repose happens to look “cross” so that she has to choose between looking cross and having to smile constantly.
So what we are saying is
(a) that a person’s face is just the way it is and what others happen to think of it is their problem.
(b) I have been forced to feel guilty about even the most elementary aspects of my accidental biology just because some superlatively selfish dickhead INSISTS on interpreting my appearance in relation to themselves.
What is more, I think that it is a CRIME that she should be forced into this position.
The Queen is 86 fucking years old. She has been the Queen for sixty years during which time she has served admirably.I for one have a hard time giving *her* a hard time. (I’m 70-years-old and I personally would have feigned a heart attack to get out of attending a dreadfully noisy, five-hour Boredom Fest.
She will never abdicate. Her uncle David abdicated in 1936, which is how she became Queen. HER mother (the late Queen Mum) despised David for abandoning his responsibility and all for the sake of that Wallis Simpson person.The current Queen took that lesson to heart.
@eric
My brother is actually three years older, so he was 18 at the time. Technically an adult. I know it sounds like something a bratty younger brother would say. He’s in his thirties now and things haven’t changed much!
I don’t know how to work tags at all.
Wow! I was assuming he said it as a bratty younger brother. At 18 – well really.
brilliant post.
the people in this culture are constantly openly declaring their moral bankruptcy, wonderfully on display here. at least they’re honest..?
“Bitch face indeed.”
Well, ‘bitch face’ is a bit rude but the site linked to is using it admiringly as one sister to another, and meaning in ‘bitch’ in the ‘queen bitch/Dallas’ sense, rather than intending any anti-woman abuse as far as I can tell, so it is a bit of a cooked up non-story (cooked up by Salon, that is). The only anti- stuff, except for some very gentle ribbing about her apparent unsporting behaviour towards the woman who beat her, are a few obscure comments after some anodyne articles along the lines of ‘what a baby’, ‘what a diva’.
Without in any way endorsing the surrounding commentary, some of those “Oh Hell No” pictures are just awesome.
In the “Olympic Athlete looks at your ridiculous coverage of me and says OH HELL NO” sense.
Marowney.