I've recently become obsessed with Johnny Weir - I'm late to this bandwagon. As it happens, the first sport I followed with any seriousness was figure skating - but I've ignored the men's competitions especially in the past few years.
My bad, because Weir is a revelation (check out his show Be Good Johnny Weir). The media's difficulty in accepting both his athleticism and his fabulousness has been stunning - but Weir gets a perfect score from me. The folks at That's Gay take this on, and I can't say it any better than they do. (Thank you Vince for sharing this video with me!)
[March 17: Outrageously - Johnny Weir has been deemed "not family friendly" and excluded from the Stars on Ice tour! See Clips and Chips.]
Saturday, March 13, 2010
3 comments:
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This is brilliant, thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteMy 11th grade history teacher (I am one year removed from high school) said often that one of the biggest factors in the partial success of feminism is sports, and that the key to that is that sports allow women to lose, and fall (referring to one of your other articles) without worrying about whether it was lady-like or not. do you believe that to be correct? Sorry if this belongs on another article.
Also, I am now a big fan of the "That's Gay" series on Youtube. Brilliant.
One more thing, must say that this blog is a welcome addition to my internet football news trawling.
Hi Will,
ReplyDeleteThat's a really great point - I do think that's true - that losing, and falling, failing spectacularly are all important experiences and strangely, they can also be empowering. (It's not the end of the world! often, it's not even the end of the game!) It's a part of being competitive - learning what to do with a loss, and failure - learning, too, to want to win - that last point is the trick, one which I think is in some ways particularly hard for anyone raise to sit in the shadows, to put their energy behind supporting other people.
You have to want someone else to lose! To fall!
Anyway, thanks for your comment - and my students told me about "That's Gay" - which is brilliant.
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