Once upon a time I used to love figure skating. I loved the sound of my skate blades as they cut against the freshly zambonied ice. I cherished briefly seeing the marks of my blades as the only ones incised into the ice, a delicate pattern that was my path across the rink. I grew giddy whenever I heard the fast-cutting sound of my blades and I both saw and felt the blur of the rink and other skaters, as I spun faster and faster. I reveled in the ping of my toe pick as I planted it and took off, adoring the moment I was momentarily airborne.
In short, I loved the sensations of skating and the artistry that extensions, spins, jumps, and spirals demanded. I felt that I was amidst pure ecstasy as I lept, jumped, and glided across the rink, extending my arms above my head, extending my body out, and letting the cold-cutting air take me anywhere and everywhere. Yet, for all the glitter and glitz, the airborne and the artistic, figure skating was never the perfect utopia that others seemed to perceive it as. A certain darkness pervaded through the chemical musk of hairspray and the suffocation of the dust of blush.
Behind the excessively glittery costumes, the rouged cheeks, and the dangerously taut and shellacked hair, was a kind of perfection that bequeathed an infinite sense of pressure. Hiding behind the impeccably choreographed routines, the medals, and awards, was a palpable sense of unspoken necessity—a necessity to never f*ck up, a necessity never to quit the grind, and most importantly, a necessity to never be human. We were eerily congruently attired automatons who knew every note from Swan Lake and Carmen to a T. We might have appeared beautiful, but under the surface, we were wrought with all the tension that competitive, ruthless, body-aching perfection brought with it.
For years, I loved the glitter and the glam of competitive figure skating. I loved the preparation and the release of performing for an underwhelming crowd of sleep-deprived skate moms, indifferent fathers, and the occasional camera-hungry grandparent. At first, I felt a certain active excitement whenever I pulled on my skin-tight glittery costumes, feeling the chill of the thin gauze and the gemstones against my bare skin. I loved the palpable tension right before a performance, shifting back and forth, toe pick to heel, toe pick to heel. I reveled in the sensation of precarity in my adrenaline as I gave my routine my all. After a while, though, I began to hate the feeling of the elastic material, at once constricting me and, with the glitzy accouterments, forcing me to always shut up, sit still, look pretty, and by extension, act like how I supposedly felt. For all the joy I felt for my first two years of figure skating, as soon as I ventured into the ring of higher-status competition, everything seemingly beautiful was incredibly ugly.
Underneath the surface, competitive figure skating was a world of slithering judgment, snobbery, privilege, and sin of Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, suffocatingly tight costumes, and attitudes that etched into one’s self like one’s blades etched into the ice.
As I began professional figure skating training, my days were filled with aching bones and barking orders. I felt more like an automaton than a person. Three hours of ice time, one hour of off-ice training, one hour of ballet, repeat. I was forced into the arena of constant improvement. I could always do better. Nothing I did was enough. Even if I landed the jump and executed the spin correctly, I could inevitably be better than my best. Yet, I was desperate for a dream in which I was a champion skater and the Olympic anthem played softly in the achiever recesses of my mind on a loop. I wanted to be up on that podium and feel the validation payoff for years of bodily pain and mental exhaustion—but was that enough to motivate me through the moments in which I struggled to do the very things champions made look effortless?
As much as I was trained to be automatic, I could not escape the inevitability of being oh-so-human. I was growing up in the rink. I was growing up with teenage insecurities in a world with constant strive for a plastic, Stepford Wives perfection only amplified the insecurities I was, typical for my age, feeling. In a world where gems and sparkles, makeup, and hairspray retracted a girl’s individuality, personality, and humanity, it was harder for me to maintain and control the messaged so-called material mein imperfections of humanity. When I already felt self-consciousness coming for me, claiming me as yet another victim of adolescent hyperawareness, I surrounded myself with ideas of beauty that forced girls to subsume a face more cosmetic than imperfect, a body more glitter than genuine. To be taut and clean in appearance in relation to these beauty ideals was the only way for the self to survive. I felt my insecurities amplified as I tried to pull my buns even tighter, make my skate laces even whiter, and my costumes even more bedazzled.
As I became a teenager, I became stuck between baby fat and hips, an awkward state of navigating the world somehow off-kilter. In a matter of months, I developed noticeable breasts. I struggled to skate as fast, to jump as high, and to improve as I had when I was less woman and far more girl. The girls around me were all younger and had the thin girlish form that was ideal for technically sound jumps and spins. Their waists looked as if they could be easily snapped and their costumes hugged all the right places of their body. Instead of looking as though the skin-tight material was sucking their bodies in, it appeared as though body and material were inseparable, a seamless transition between form and costume. Their ponytails were eerily tight and swished with an attitude that matched their trademark cattiness. Here I was,14, stuck between womanhood and girlhood, a natural position for girls to hold, and yet, I was seething in frustration directed toward my body.
To me, it seemed unnatural that my natural form and its development limited my physical abilities. As the glossy blonde ponytails of petite forms jumped around me with an ease that resembled popcorn kernels popping, lightly and high, I fell, I underrotated and slammed my fists down on the ice. I had never felt heavier in my life, as I was submerged in a pond of petite and ruthless perfection that threatened to sink my soul.
“I’ve noticed she has started….really…I don’t mean to make her feel self-conscious, but she is starting to develop…chest-wise. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but it could be worthwhile to get something that actually supports her, to help,” my coach said, her disdain for my developing body and its limitations evident in her coded snarkiness.
For this world that perpetuated standards of perfection, I was not measuring up. I glanced out on the ice and watched as girls with the bodily build of a thin willow tree branch glided across the ice to the harsh approval of their instructors. When I was out there, my hips and breasts ever so slightly stuck out, and my body shook. I wasn’t big, but I certainly was not the tiny form that could leap into the air with ease. The willowy confections around me paraded around the rink, owning the ice with the ease with which they could be airborne. Eleven-year-olds did double salchows with enviable ease, while I was still terrified, struggling with my single axel- one and a half rotations in the air. Their tiny hips, glittery skate guards, size XS costumes, and catty attitudes both intimidated and annihilated me from the arena of successful skaters and the ideal of unprecedented perfection. As my body continued to develop my center of gravity continued to shift and therefore exacerbate my on-ice woes, eventually ending in a career-ending concussion. The words of my ex-coach will always ring in my ear-” The reason you got injured was because you were skating so terribly, like total crap!”
My best had never been good enough and that was evident. My best was only when I maintained a toxically scrupulous relationship with my appearance and abilities in equal measure. In summation, I was only ever up to standards when I approached myself with a distant, inhumane harshness. It was meant to be self-disciplining when all it managed to do was be self-inflicting.
Although I have left my figure skating days long behind me, there are still days where I long for the artificial smell that hangs in the cold, man-made, arctic of the arena. Sometimes I crave the sound of my blades and the sensation of a blurry, indistinguishable rink. Occasionally, Claire De Lune comes on my Apple Music mix and I remember gliding across the ice, tip-toeing on my toe pick to the rhythm of the flowing notes, my arms extended in a plea to the dramatic and theatrical. Sometimes when there is a patch of shiny, smooth ice on the sidewalk, I stop and let myself feel the sensation of the ice under my feet, remembering what it was like to indulge in precarity.
Yet, I realize that so much of the destructive perfectionist mindset in competitive figure skating still lies within myself. While I no longer don glittery costumes and sheath my face in uncomfortable makeup, I fashion myself as an enemy with a perfectionist mindset. Within me, lies a belief made inherent that I am only my best when I self-mutilate with harsh standards of achievement and accomplishment. I am unsatiated by my best efforts. I exist in a state of numbness to the efforts that are simply and logically the best I put forward. Moreover, perfectionism is unchecked in its power and endlessly pervades my sense of self. Yet, I also still feel trepidation and hardship around loving my body and the details of my natural form. The glitter and gems, makeup, and hairspray only artificially masked the scars of feigning impenetrability to scrutiny.
The scars are still here and I feel an invisible costume sucking in both my body and soul, reiterating physical criticisms to blame myself in a routine exercise of deprecation. I still reconcile with feeling consequence and punishment in my body in times of physical joy. The aftermaths of eating dessert and indulgent meals sit heavy on my soul and a force inside the pit of my guilty stomach twists and turns as if someone is about to catch me and I deserve reprimanding. After years of conditioning discipline and privileged unprecedented perfection, I still struggle to live exempt from a guilt that attaches to the actions, accumulations, and abilities of my body, and by extension my sense of self. Although the costumes may shine and gleam and the tricks may appeal to the awe of audiences, there is a darker side to figure skating where costumes and tricks hide a discipline that destructively deprecates, even years after competition. I try my best to create distance between myself and any lingering demons. Some days are better than others, but I know that I am on my way, even if slowly. The TV blares in the living room of a suburban house far away and a young girl watches with wide eyes as a lithe figure in a blur of purple and glitter glides across the ice. There is a moment of idolization planted and a dream begins to sprout. I wish to warn that young girl from mistaking the glitz and the glam for a beauty that satiates and is all she wants it to be. I will always say, even to my grave, that all that glitters is not always gold.