Body-Shaming target Elena Shushunova [Apr '69 -16 Aug '18] Post-Olympic Tour Beam routine 🔎🔍
🧐 · 14.08.2024 · 13:26:14 ··· MiTTwoch ⭐ 1 🎬 190
📺domperrier
🧠 · 03.11.2024 · 23:17:49 ··· Sonntag
👓 · 05.11.2024 · 12:39:20 ··· Dienstag
Shortly after the 1988 Olympics when the Soviet team was on a post-Olympic victory tour in the United States. The tour was held jointly with the American gymnastics team, and an American member of the delegation had been tasked with submitting a written report for a major gymnastics magazine. The report featured the following paragraph.
“Shushunova picked up extra pounds since Seoul and was very self-conscious of that fact. She would catch a glimpse of herself in a full length mirror, shake her head and mutter what were probably bad words in Russian. (Apparently, the Soviet coaches were also concerned about their women’s team gaining weight-the Soviet girls seldom appeared at the evening dinner table.)”
What makes this particular exchange so disturbing is that it wasn’t Shushunova being outspoken, but that her behavior was so noticeable, others had observed it. Provoking the question as to what else had occurred away from the public eye? But what I also want to stress, this occurred after the 1988 Olympics. By this point, Elena Shushunova was already one of the most successful gymnasts to have ever lived.
The second example comes from an interview Shushunova gave in 2008. Gymnovosti provided a translated version of the interview and included the following quote from Elena Shushunova:
“Wow, what a body for gymnastics she has! Well, I don’t have that, so I’ll need to find a way to win.”
The quote was made in regards to Olga Mostepanova. It demonstrates Shushunova’s focus on her body being something that didn’t originate after the 1988 Olympics, but had existed in the early parts of her career. It reveals Shushunova feeling as if she couldn’t compete, as if her body put her at a disadvantage, and that she didn’t conform with Soviet norms.
But what did Shushunova do? She didn’t let it faze her or disrupt her determination. Shushunova’s immediate thought was to find a different way to win.
In my own family, my elder brother, who loved FOOD was constantly body-shamed by our mean-spirited, face-obsessed father & forced to monitor his weight constantly & being told: " You're a doctor's son: what will people say?". I believe that all through his life, he was envious of my shapely physique as I put on weight rarely & shed it easily due to my own childhood issues of being the black sheep of the family & never feeling that I deserved to eat heartily. Sadly, he passed of cancer a month before his 52nd birthday on Christmas Day 2023.
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· 14.08.2024 · 13:26:14 ··· MiTTwoch
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