People who just want to celebrate all these young Russian ladies skaters without engaging or reckoning with the toxic system that produces them become complicit in that toxic system.

Just as so many, including me, were complicit in the toxic system that was USA Gymnastics, and the toxic systems that have far too often been a part of girls’/women’s sports.

The damage done to bodies and psyches when young girls are subjected to the mental and physical abuse—and obsessive control over these girls’ weights is both those thing—can be lifelong.

I was a gymnast from about age 7-12. My coaches were verbally abusive—sometimes bringing a gym full of people to a halt because one of them was yelling so loudly at a girl, bringing her to tears—and incessantly commented on my and others’ weights in front of other girls.

I remember once, while standing on a low beam, one of the coaches grabbing my thigh and pointing out to me and the other girls watching all the “cottage cheese” I needed to lose. This was one of the coaches I remember thinking was the nice one!

I constantly thought I was fat. My body dysmorphia was so bad, I remember when I was in college, and my mom sent me some old professional photos we had had made at my gym of me in various gymnastics poses, and I looked at them completely dumbfounded. I was thin! I had a little

bubble butt, but everywhere else was toned muscle and skin. In no world was I anything close to even mildly overweight, much less fat. I could not reconcile these pictures at all with my memory of what my body was like at that age. My mind had been so warped by the toxicity of

the system I was in. My food and body issues continue to this day, and I am almost 45 years old. I don’t place all the blame on those experiences, but they were foundational and I know they are still a part of me. And I consider myself a relatively mentally healthy person!

So, please, do not turn away from what is going on with these girls today. That doesn’t mean you can’t like them or their skating! And I don’t mean to suggest there aren’t similar problems in other feds and programs. But we KNOW a good part of what is happening w/ Eteri’s girls.

And refusing to acknowledge and challenge that because we only want to focus on the positive, or just want to consume the pretty product, makes us part of the problem.

Sorry for the rant.