All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Apr. 19th, 2026 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueToday, I rewatched the music video for Sufjan Stevens' "Tonya Harding," which is footage of Tonya Harding in the 1991 World Figure Skating Championship. It's the first time I've seen it since the Olympics, and midway through, it hit me how similar it is to the skating of Olympic gold medal winner Alyssa Liu. The muscularity of their figures, the freedom of their movement - it overlaps in ways I don't have words for.
I wouldn't have been aware of Harding in 1991; I didn't (and don't) follow figure skating outside of the Olympics. But I remember in 1994 how much background chatter there was about how female skaters should be demure, balletic, princess-like, and tiny. I'd say the 90s generally were the most screechy body size decade I've lived through, which added to it, but that was separate. This was about what was aesthetically correct for skating.
It was very strange. You were supposed to be proud of Harding because she was on the American team and would run up the points with her very high scoring triple axel nobody else could do, but you needed to acknowledge that she was not the quarterback (she was I guess an offensive lineman?) and that maybe being able to do the triple axel was sort of cheating.
Watching Tanya skate in 1991 and seeing it match Liu in 2026 makes me feel some things. Things that blur into the gymnastics coaching scandal. It's been a bad year for rollbacks of women's rights and open misogyny (and I believe domestic violence homicides are up) but maybe in some pockets we finally broke through pervy old man patriarchy. Look at Alyssa Liu.
I wouldn't have been aware of Harding in 1991; I didn't (and don't) follow figure skating outside of the Olympics. But I remember in 1994 how much background chatter there was about how female skaters should be demure, balletic, princess-like, and tiny. I'd say the 90s generally were the most screechy body size decade I've lived through, which added to it, but that was separate. This was about what was aesthetically correct for skating.
It was very strange. You were supposed to be proud of Harding because she was on the American team and would run up the points with her very high scoring triple axel nobody else could do, but you needed to acknowledge that she was not the quarterback (she was I guess an offensive lineman?) and that maybe being able to do the triple axel was sort of cheating.
Watching Tanya skate in 1991 and seeing it match Liu in 2026 makes me feel some things. Things that blur into the gymnastics coaching scandal. It's been a bad year for rollbacks of women's rights and open misogyny (and I believe domestic violence homicides are up) but maybe in some pockets we finally broke through pervy old man patriarchy. Look at Alyssa Liu.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-04-20 10:41 am (UTC)