‘I'm Worried, But I'm Still Letting My Daughter Be a Gymnast’

I will never forget my daughter's very first gymnastics class. She was 6 years old, and as a dozen other girls were warming up on the floor, she just went—voom—straight into a full split. She'd never done one before. By the end of practice, she was mastering cartwheels.

I can still feel that hot, prickly sensation in my veins, a mixture of great pride—and abject terror. As a former gymnast, my back reminds me every day that our bodies are not designed to bend that way for years on end. And I've met and interviewed enough Olympic gymnasts to know that the culture of the sport can be cruel and sheltering.

I was torn between wanting to nurture her natural talent and visible joy and thinking: How I could possibly want that for her?

My daughter’s passion won out, and now, at 11, she’s a competitive gymnast. She has a poster of the Final Five—with her idols Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas—hanging near her bed, above all of her medals. She dreams about going to the Olympics, and the only actual dream she can ever remember having was being invited—by Marta herself—to go to the Karolyi ranch in Texas. She mentioned that as we watched Larry Nassar’s sentencing. Only this time, she didn’t break into her usual ear-to-ear smile thinking about the possibility. She felt like we all did: Sad. Sickened.

She asked how all those women—156 and likely many, many more—could have been treated that way. How this man could explain away molestation as “treatment.” How USA Gymnastics could have been so blind to it all. Or how officials knew, but looked the other way—and let it happen for decades.

I told her that if anyone—even a medical professional—tried to touch her inappropriately that she should scream and fight and run and tell us or someone, anyone. And she insisted she’d never, never allow someone to abuse her like that. But as much as I wanted to believe her, I still worry.

Why? Because it takes a very particular type of person to excel at gymnastics.

Girls are cherry-picked to join the competitive team not just for their body type and flexibility, but for their ability to listen and follow direction extremely well. Hurling your body in the air—over a vault table or four-inch-wide balance beam—is too dangerous not to do exactly what your coach tells you. But that lends itself to a certain level of not questioning authority.

Gymnasts also have an uncanny tenacity and competitiveness—with other people, yes, but first and foremost with themselves—that can sometimes teeter toward self-harm. You don’t sit out a sprained ankle. You tape it and get back out there. You don’t skip practice when your lats are so sore from doing pull-ups on the uneven bars that you can’t lift your arms above your head. You put on your leotard and go because it’s expected of you and you expect it of yourself. You don’t cry when you fall off the beam. You smile at the judges, take a deep breath, shake off the humiliation, and finish your damn routine. If you remember Kerri Strug’s Olympic-winning vault on her destroyed ankle, what you witnessed was a live-action look inside the mind of a gymnast. Get up. Do better. Be perfect.

What I’m saying is that it’s not just one bad doctor that’s the only problem here, but the culture of the sport and the personality type of the girls who love it. Gymnastics revolves around finding fault in everything you do. You start with a perfect score and lose points from there. Every bobble, or head that’s tilted a little too far back, or arm that’s not stick straight is a deduction. Which is why, from the coaches and trainers to the judges, the culture of gymnastics has traditionally been one of criticism, and of girls sucking it up and pushing on because they’re tough as nails and they know no other way of life. (Most elite athletes spend more time in the gym and at competitions than they do at home with their own families.)

One of the things that hit me hardest listening to the testimony of all those athletes is that they often went to Nassar because he was the one person who was actually nice to them. Who gave them a smile. Who pretended to help. Think about it: What sort of a fucked-up situation are you dealing with—and living and training in day after day—when your sexual abuser becomes your safe haven?

So why do I still send my daughter off to the gym for 11 hours a week, knowing all this? For starters, the culture in her gym isn’t at all like the ones I remember growing up, where posters would hang the walls reminding every athlete that, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” Her coaches aren’t the sharp-tongued task masters that we've seen glorified on TV. They encourage the girls to do their best, cheer each other on, and focus on how great it feels to be strong and badass, rather than tiny and flawless. I feel that same spirit from the other gyms she competes against. That gives me hope for the future of this sport.

What also helps: Nassar is finally serving his “death sentence,” and the old-guard of USAG—the entire board—will likely be out within days. Measures have already been put into place to try to ensure that abuse of any kind is not only not tolerated, it’s simply not part of the sport anymore, period. Gymnastics should be a positive, not punishing experience.

After a meet last weekend, we went out to dinner with the family of one of my daughter's teammates. The girls buzzed about the competition over chicken fingers—talking a mile a minute about how proud they were their team had come together and won the all-around. “Gymnastics is the best,” her friend said. “I wish we could do this every day!” And my daughter said, “Me, too!”