Letters to the Editor
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Very good interview
The questions in the interview are very to the point and bring out the full horror of this story.
What fascinates me is that Sey, even now from an adult point of view, still regards a physician sending a girl back to the gym with a concussion or a freshly broken ankle as normal practice in this field, when the world at large would probably see this as malpractice.
Hard to believe, but then she lived the life and has gone public with her allegations.
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Gymnastics in the 80's
This sounds like a very interesting book. I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately because I was a little girl gymnast and now I have a little daughter and am trying to bring her into the sport without potentially exposing her to the darker side of it.
As a skinny little 8yr old I was mocked for having "baby fat" by coaches and teammates. My coach would come up with all sorts of punishments if we didn't get something right, things such as hurling us into the foam pit (no, it didn't hurt all that much, but it felt very violent). He would scream at us about how spoiled and worthless we were compared to "the little Russian girls who have to do this to Eat!" Every girl on the team hated every other girl, because while gymnastics is a team sport, the teammates compete against each other for individual placements in competition. Sometimes I gross out friends with horror stories of the giant rips that would develop on my palms when blisters burst, and how I had to just chalk my bloody hands back up and keep working on the bars. Team practice was every day for 4 hours, the last hour was literally hundreds and hundreds of sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups.
And this is for level 8 - several steps down from olympic training.
I'm deeply grateful to my parents for supporting me in my decision to quit while I still had some childhood left.
On the other hand, gymnastics was a big piece of my life. The feeling of flying through the air, of turning forward momentum into upward motion, of twisting and then landing proudly on my feet was an exhilarating experience. I value the strength, flexibility and confidence in my own physical strength that I gained from gymnastics.
I've met several former girl ballerinas who've had similar experiences, but this is the first time I've come across something about the experience of gymnasts in the 1980's. It was a very awkward time for the sport.
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Love the sexist headline
Plenty of other quotes you could have used instead.
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Cashing in on a hot topic
As a former gymnast and former coach I take extreme offense to what this interview and, potentially, this book has to say about gymnastics in general. I spent nearly 25 years in several different gyms and never once had or witnessed the treatment that Ms. Sey mentions. The few girls I knew while competing who developed eating disorders were immediately removed from the competitive team and now allowed back until a doctor deemed them healthy. And those of us who were injured were kept out of the gym until we were healthy, often to our dismay, not the coaches. Perhaps it was different in the 1980's but when I was in the gym and still today, there is little chance for a girl with an eating disorder to be near the shape required for the sport.
Yes, you hear of terrible things happening occasionally, but it's just as likely to happen anywhere else, on the soccer field on a girl scout field trip. Send your kids to a reputable gym, talk to the owners about hiring practices and their mission statement. The thing you don't hear is all the benefits gymnastics offers to young girls. The strength and self confidence and pride gymnastics taught me are indispensable and I never once regret having spent my childhood in a gym. Don't let Ms. Sey scare you away from giving that to your kids.
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Little Girls in Pretty Boxes
For a similar take on the sports of gymnastics and figure skating, read Joan Ryan's "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes." Everything that Sey said in her interview corroborates what Ryan found out when she investigated these sports back in the '90s.
However, neither of these books talks about elite gymnastics as it stands in 2008. Are these kinds of abuses still happening? Judging from the bodies of gymnasts, it looks like eating disorders are still pretty common.
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At a Pac Ten School
My friend arrived for training for the varsity women's gymnastic team and was in superb shape. She was super-tiny. Maybe 5'1" and 90 pounds? She had trained 8 hours a day in high school (meaning she couldn't attend some regular classes). And the coach told ALL of the new freshman athletes to lose 8 pounds. Every one of them. No matter what their shape or size. Everyone must lose 8 pounds. I guess it was supposed to be to see who was the most disciplined or insanely dedicated, but it was also physically unhealthy and psychologically abusive.
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Haven't read the book but...
as a former gymnast I must say that much of this depends on the gym and the coaches. I moved around quite a bit as a child and every gym was different. Some gyms were wonderful but others were truly terrible. At one gym, the girls were in tears almost every night and the coach required the girls to wear only leotards (not leotards and spandex shorts as many other gymnasts wear) so that they could better monitor the girls' weight. Another gym told me (at 5'1 100 pounds of pure muscle- no eating disorder here!) that I had to lose 20 pounds to train with their team. But in both cases, I walked away when I realized the situation wasn't right for me and my parents were supportive. But the two gyms I spent the most years at were truly homes away from home. The time I spent there taught me lessons that have helped me achieve success and survive failure ever since. I am so thankful for the wonderful coaches and teammates I had through my ten years as a gymnast.
As an aside, I saw more disordered eating on my high school cross country, track and field and soccer teams than I ever saw as a gymnast. Like everything else in life, there is no perfect sport, no perfect coach and no perfect athlete. I don't want to discount the things that happened to Jennifer Sey because I know first hand those gyms/coaches do exist. Stories like hers are a valuable reminder that we must instill the strength in our children to know what is right and what is wrong and how to walk away when necessary.