AMERICAN PRODIGIES
EPSIODE 5
TRANSCRIPT
AMIRA: This episode contains accounts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and racism. You’ll also hear some swearing. Previously, on American Prodigies:
WENDY HILLIARD: So when I left, I wasn't- even if I was the only Black in training camp or internationally, I always came home to a Black city and an environment, and my church and my school. That makes a difference. I think it really does.
BETTY OKINO: It was frustrating ‘cause all my teammates – it was during that time everyone was doing like the bang all curled up. [laughs] And, you know, my hair didn't do that.
AMIRA: Did you try once?
BETTY OKINO: Of course! I tried lots of times! I tried everything that they did.
JOYCE WILBORN: But it still bothers me today because being in Olympics was my ultimate goal since I was little. That's all I lived for. I had to work hard. I mean harder than these other gymnasts to prove that I belonged where I belonged. And that's one of the things with being a Black gymnast: we have to work twice as hard than everybody else to prove we belong to be there. And it shouldn't be like that.
AMIRA: In 2012, at the age of sixteen, Gabrielle Douglas became the first African American to win an all-around Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.
LEXI: Nobody will ever float like Gabby in 2012…
DAWN: The last tumbling pass that she did, she did this, you know, amazing rebound into a leap. And everyone was like, oh, my God!
JASMINE SWYNINGAN: Oh, yeah... Yeah, that was awesome.
AMIRA: I remember watching Gabby compete in 2012. I held my breath the whole time. And at the end, I remember still feeling like it wasn't going to happen - that she wasn’t going to win - up until they finally released her scores. I remember the headline on ESPN, “All-American Golden Girl.” And that girl they were talking about? She was a Black girl. It was historic. Dominique Dawes interviewed Gabby the day of Gabby’s Olympic win. It was clear the baton was being passed from one great to another.
Dominique Dawes (Archival): Here in London, I've been out and about. Moms that are my age have come to me and said, “Oh Dominique, we idolize you!” And then the little daughters that are there are like, “Well, where's Gabby Douglas?” Everyone's been asking me where you are.
AMIRA: Little gymnasts everywhere were and still are inspired by Gabby.
KYLA: She is a really good gymnast. And she is Black like me.
SEDERA: My favorite gymnast was Gabby Douglas. I think she’s still my favorite. She was the person I looked up to when I was really young.
CARTER: I remember when she did the salute, then I was like, "Oh, yeah. Now I want to do gymnastics." Yep, no cap!
AMIRA: After her win, Gabby was the most talked about Olympic athlete on social media. Her page on NBCOlympics.com garnered over 18 million views, that’s twice as many as fellow Olympic medalist, Michael Phelps. And in 2016, she made a comeback helping Team USA earn an Olympic gold. But so many things happened between 2012 and 2016.
TV Host (Archival): Earlier this week, Gabby was criticized for not placing her hand over her heart during the national anthem... Gabby Douglas is acting ocean salty - not pumped for her teammates. Not good.
DAWN RHODES: And then, as we often do with Black athletes, we come around to her hair.
JASMINE SWYNINGAN: We have to find something about powerful Black women to criticize.
AMIRA: I didn’t have a chance to talk with Gabby for this episode. She politely declined an interview. It’s disappointing, but understandable when you think about the trauma elite gymnasts have had to endure. Consider Joyce Wilburn for example. Her dream of making the 1988 Olympic team was crushed by injury.
JOYCE WILBORN: I never regretted bein' a gymnast, even after I left the sport. But when I left, I left. And I didn’t look back. For me, the pain... it was too great. I don’t watch gymnastics on TV either. And just talking about it still affects me. I didn't see when Gabby won. I heard about it.
AMIRA: Betty Okino told us it took her years to renew her relationship to the sport:
BETTY OKINO: Ten years after gymnastics and so far is like, "What am I going to do now?" I felt a little bit bitter about it. And I didn't want people associating me with that with gymnastics. I wanted the opposite of what that world provided. Like, I wanted a voice, I wanted to speak out, I wanted to like... be emotional and for it to be okay... I wanted... I just wanted - I wanted more.
AMIRA: Leading up to the 2012 Olympics, Gabby gave an outstanding performance at the American Cup... as an alternate. So technically, her routines didn’t count even though had the highest scores.
Commentator (Archival): Gabby Douglas from Virginia Beach. And she is just an alternate - she is not officially in the competition. Guess what? She’s beating everybody.
AMIRA: Then at the Olympic trials, her scores very much counted and she took home gold. After that she was featured on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time Magazine as someone to watch at the Olympics. And of course she did not disappoint. She returned from London with the all-around Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, a historic achievement. After her Olympic success, Gabby was everywhere. She was on the magazine covers of Essence, Jet, and People. She was on 106 & Park and Hot 97:
Radio Host 1 (Archival): Gabby Douglas. What’s goin' on?
Radio Host 2: For America! [cheering]
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Thank you!
AMIRA: She was on Wendy Williams:
Gabby Douglas (Archival): So, Wendy how you doin'?
Wendy Williams (Archival): How you doin'? [laughs]
Gabby Douglas (Archival): How you doin'? [laughs]
Wendy Williams (Archival): Congratulations on everything!
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Thank you!
AMIRA: She was named as one of Barbara Walters’ most fascinating people:
Barbara Walters (Archival): At six, she started at a local gym. She was a prodigy. By eight, she was winning state championships.
AMIRA: She took pictures with Oprah on the balance beam:
Oprah (Archival): Oh, this is the world-famous gym! Gayle, take our picture on the beam.
Gayle (Archival): Oprah, do something! [laughs]
AMIRA: Gabby had a Lifetime movie and she wrote her autobiography at sixteen years old! That’s a lot. And how could we forget when Gabby was flippin' on stage at the 2012 VMAs while Alicia Keys sang, “This girl is on fire!” Gabby Douglas was literally the hottest one around. Until she was not.
[AD]
AMIRA: In today’s episode, I have a conversation with Dr. Courtney Cox.
DR. COX: I am an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon.
AMIRA: And Dr. Sam Sheppard.
DR. SHEPPARD: I'm an associate professor of cinema and media studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.
AMIRA: Sam, Courtney, and I all study race, gender, and sports. Sam and Courtney both look at media - look at portrayals of athletes in media studies on the big screen and documentaries. I knew they were the perfect people to get together with to break down the way Gabby Douglas has been portrayed by media throughout her entire career. You’ll also hear insights from Jasmine Swyningan, one of Minnesota’s only Black gymnastics judges, Derrin Moore, the founder of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, Wendy Hilliard, the first Black rhythmic gymnast to compete on team USA, and Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles. Plus, young gymnasts who aspire to be like Gabby. Together, we examine how Gabby, the prodigy, was thrown into the media spotlight right at a time when social media was making it much easier for fans to interact - and attack - athletes, especially Black girls. My conversation with Sam and Courtney begins with the simple question: “Whatever happened to Gabby?”
DR. SHEPPARD: It's because in certain ways, she just disappeared. She has this big media blitz, she's everywhere, she's on the shows... she's got the lifetime movies. And she seems so public. And then she's gone.
AMIRA: I'm wondering when this kind of observation came about and what was the kind of driving question about this kind of invisibility of somebody who was once super, super visible?
DR. SHEPPARD: When we think about Gabby and her representation in the media it was both hyper visibility, hyper-saturation, but we did not at all take into account that she was not a public personality, she did not have extensive media training, and more importantly, the commodification of blackness in terms of media meant that she was something to be sold. But she was not meant to be a person. She was meant to be a thing.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Today I got to meet Gabby! My own Barbie doll! And, oh my gosh, this is just so exciting. It's just so amazing and it's such a huge honor to have a Barbie doll made of my own likeness. Like, it's just...
DR. SHEPPARD: So, the very fact that she ends up becoming a Barbie itself is that she is meant to be able to play a role in children's lives or in adults' lives and be a figure, but not be not be a person with faults, not be a person with hurts, not be a person with the dynamic and ever shifting relationship to the thing that made her famous. So she's only meaningful because she's Gabby Douglas, the gymnast. So when she's on the VMAs and we have to hear Alicia Keys shriek, "This girl is on fire!" She's not on fire because, oh, she's seventeen and she's going to figure out what she's going to do with her life, is that she can do a backflip. Her life itself is narrated in a way that it is both a melodrama and a fairy tale and a source of inspiration.
TV Narrator: Like all Olympians Gabby Douglas's road to the Olympics was paved with determination, hard work, and sacrifice. But it was more than that. Gabby's journey was laid on a foundation of God's Word and prayer.
DR. SHEPPARD: So, when she gets this Lifetime movie made in 2014 and you watch it and look... it's great! It's terrible, but it's great! It’s just about like all of your poverty, all of the suffering, was because champions are not made out of muscle, they are made out of heart. And so, you get this whole movie that's almost an hour and a half long and like the Olympics, played two seconds of it because it doesn't even matter that she won is that she has overcome all of these things to get to this destination of a point that's supposed to be more meaningful that doesn't even make up the whole part of her life. And then it's over. The meaning of her life is over in certain kinds of ways.
AMIRA: So, I really appreciate that point, Sam, because it's like, you know, when I started researching Black women in sports, I went to look for their stories and I couldn't find them right - except for in children's books. Because in twenty pages on the strength of a dream, you can overcome racism and sexism and poverty... I had to ask myself, what is it about Black women in sports that make them so useful, for these like truncated stories? Why are they such like fodder for inspiration? And I think especially when thinking about sports and saying, like, what is the next part of the story? Courtney?
DR. COX: Part of what I'm hearing even in thinking about this difference between girlhood and womanhood, within like children's books the way that these narratives work - especially work well when we're talking about girls, right? We're talking about relatable struggles, right? And how girls are way more marketable. It makes sense for the Barbie, for the fashion line, for the reality show, for the movie, for the memoir. What has happened in the first sixteen years of my life are not book worthy. I also am not a first in any way - so, it's a little different. But so much life has to be lived and once you make it past being eighteen, past being twenty-two, being past thirty, you're like, "Oh, things are really just now marinating." And so, it's interesting how marketable girlhood is and there's plenty of folks that have written and talked about how girls in sport are way more marketable than women in sport. And so, we see this on full display with Gabby being able to be everywhere. And then, the disposability of not only that particular sport, but how girls are rendered safer. Women are just this complicated, mysterious thing that cannot be at anyways understood in terms of full humanity in a way that girls can represent innocence, can represent success in a particular way, can overcome in a way that can be very palatable. And then the other side about that is how you come into adulthood, how you come into your Blackness in a particular way in this highly visible space.
AMIRA: And I wanted to think about also what it means when she's visible, because then you have all these kind of other moments like, of course, hair. But also like that moment where she, like tries to do the Dougie.
TV Host 2 (Archival): You told us the other day that you would do a happy dance if you made the Olympic team. Do you have it in you?
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Yeah, I could do the Dougie for you guys. [laughs]
TV Host 2: That’s pretty good!
Music ("Teach Me How to Gabby" by Non Juan): They be like Nah, can you teach me how to Gabby? Know why? Why? They still can’t do the Dougie. Aw. All you need is the...
AMIRA: Which clearly still grinds her gears because she'll make a TikTok about it like every other month, for real. [laughs]
DR. COX: It would haunt me too, honestly.
AMIRA: I was on Twitter the other day and somebody was just like, “You ever randomly think about that gymnast tryin' to dance?”
DR. COX: Not “that gymnast”! [laughs]
AMIRA: Yeah! You also have these moments, whether it's your hair and hair upkeep and attempts to do the Dougie that is also seemingly putting her under a microscope of her own Blackness. Speaking of being put under the microscope for your Blackness, Sam, Courtney and I had to talk about Gabby’s hair. At the London Olympics, people were obsessed with it. Gabby did interview after interview trying to refocus the attention to her athletic accomplishments.
DR. SHEPPARD: It's the thing that's brought up in every single interview so that she has to keep responding.
AMIRA: Like in this Hot 97 interview when she had to once again deal with the backlash about her hair:
Radio Host 3 (Archival): It like was all over Twitter and there was this big kind of discussion about Gabby's hair, right? What did it feel like? 'Cause you're at work and we was all like, "Yo, leave the little girl alone!" I mean yeah okay the ponytail aight... it's lookin' at... but she's sweatin', and she's workin', she's doing flips like- Did you feel a certain way about that?
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Uh... I was definitely hurt because a lot had went on and I had made history and then... um... then they were talking about my hair. But there's like always somethin'.
Radio Host 4 (Archival): Right.
Radio Host 5 (Archival): There's a bigger picture.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Yeah. There's a-
Radio Host 5 (Archival): People are worried about the wrong things.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Yeah. It was a little sad but you know what, I did not want to focus on the negative and-
Radio Host 4 (Archival): Good for you, man.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): -so much... so many positives were goin' and happening...
AMIRA: Here’s the thing: Black hair is under constant scrutiny especially in white spaces. Moreover, for many people, like Derrin Moore, the state of hair itself carries meanings about your identity and your wellbeing.
DERRIN MOORE: I feel like other people, other cultures, don't understand hair for us. It's not just that our hair is different, our hair holds so much power for us that when you come across people who don't understand it and who talk bad about it, it's more than just like, "Oh, I don't like your shirt." Like, it's major for us, you know?
AMIRA: So, what’s often missing from this conversation about hair is that Gabby had moved to Iowa to train and lived with a white family. She was not in a place where there was not a lot of focus on Black hair care. And sending her to Iowa in the first place was not an easy decision for her mom, Natalie.
Natalie Hawkins (Archival): I cried a lot of tears because I knew what it would mean. I mean, it would actually mean I'm going to pick up my fourteen-year-old daughter, the youngest of four children, who I didn't even let spend the night really with anyone else, and let her move to Iowa.
AMIRA: Wendy Hilliard reminded us how normal it was for great gymnasts to leave their communities to go train with the best coaches. It was an enormous tradeoff.
WENDY HILLIARD: If you're totally away from all your community - and a lot of Blacks had to do that. Gabby had to do that... Dominique Dawes had to do that. When they went to train in Iowa or wherever, you live with your coach someplace, they were never around Black people. I'm like that... [laughs] that is some serious pressure.
AMIRA: Jasmine Swynigan lived in Iowa at the same time Gabby was training there.
JASMINE SWYNINGAN: Everyone was just so critical of, you know, why doesn't she know how to do her hair? Why can't she find someone to do her hair better? I went to school in Iowa at around the same time that she was training in Iowa for the 2012 Olympics, and the options were pretty slim and few and far between. And also like, if you're practicing six/seven hours a day, when are you going to do your hair? Like, it takes hours.
AMIRA: All Black girls have a really awkward hair phase. It just so happens that thirteen/fourteen when Black gymnasts are doing it also coincides with the most visible part of their career. What was your hairstyle at that age? I could tell you mine. Mine was like... you would flat iron the bangs and then leave the rest curly. The bangs always were like here... like, couldn’t see the eyes.
DR. COX: Mm-hmm. Yes, and with a slight bend. You know, they're just like bent. I've been there.
DR. SHEPPARD: You know, I had a longstanding relationship with the same hairdresser who did my hair for like thirty years. But then I was like a braids girl. And the second, I put those braids in and the head tossing and the ponytail - got to go for a run and just the bobbing of the head back and forth. You know how many people I hit both purposely and on accident with those braids? And they would be the burnt-end braids, the kind that said, "Oh, this is like a little mini whip!" [laughs] Like bam!
DR. COX: My freshman year of high school, I decided to go natural in a moment that was not Target or easily accessible for hair products. [laughs]
AMIRA: There was no YouTube tutorials. [laughs]
DR. COX: It was a rough moment. And I'm thinking about when you say specifically like fourteen, I just was on these message boards like, "Yes, I gotta get rid of this relaxer!" My mom was like, "You gonna do what? This is canon!" I'm so grateful that I had that moment in private. Like, I cannot imagine being seen all the time. Part of my own teenage experience is heavily mediated through my hair: getting my hair done, talking about what hairstyle I might imagine once this hair grew out. And so, I think that moment of exploration without hardcore judgment outside of, you know, your close family and friend groups, I think that there's a freedom to that. Very often that Black women/Black girls who are highly mediated don't get that freedom…. I hate that because that's such a huge part of the discovery process. And having all these extra folks makes it so much harder!
AMIRA: But I think about it too, because that hair conversation was really resonant to me as a transracial adoptee, where it was very clear to me that hair was an entryway. And always also something that was like a hyper visible signal of if I was okay. If you're going to be adopted by white lesbians, like let it be the two that got me, right? Because from jump one of my mom's learned how to braid when I was a baby. All her friends are Black women, and she just learned how to braid on a Cabbage Patch doll because she knew she needed to know how to braid my hair throughout my life. And so, when that conversation happened around Gabby's hair, I felt like it was also kind of like one of those internal Black Twitter discussions that then, like other people get into and it's like, "This wasn't really like an open invitation space." Right? In many ways, when I think about that conversation, I think about people who were like talking about her hair as a way to say, "Is she okay?" Like, she's surrounded by this system, this bubble, that does not have racial mirrors, that has cut her off from her family by necessity of winning, right? Like, that is the whole premise - like, you go to move to Iowa. And this kind of way that it signaled like, "We need to kind of surround her." You know, especially after everyone watched her try to do the Dougie. But then it was people like, "Leave her alone! She's like, doing her sport." And I think that it like transformed in real time to a very different conversation about her hair, which was more about scrutiny on her and not a critique on the system that she was in.
DR. SHEPPARD: She grows up in a social media age, so then we see her trying so hard to have her hair done. Like there was such a: How will she look in the next time if she has to be public? And it's odd because it's like nobody has Beyonce's weave-ologist. Every time I also look at her hair, 'cause I'm thinking to myself, "You're so aware of it," that all I can see is it.
DR. COX: As I'm listening to this about Gabby's hair, is there's like the anti-blackness of worrying about this woman's edges - this girl's edges in 2012 - when we're talking about her performance, right? Which is also how women in general, especially Black women, are so policed for their appearance as they're also doing great athletic things. Like, this idea of having to look like Beyoncé while also performing like Gabby is a huge thing! Again that precarity, this thin line of like damned if you do, damned if you don't. And then when I watch these folks read how Black women, for example, are looking at Gabby's hair and then I'm seeing white women and Black men...
AMIRA: This is not your conversation!
DR. COX: It's like anti-Blackness inception. We're having this conversation - which is something that is a beauty shop conversation - and then and there's a way that we can hold each other accountable in that space of like we are worried about Gabby's edges. What have we been conditioned to think in this way where we feel like she's unacceptable? I think that there's just something about watching that moment play out on social media and watching the anti-Blackness pile up from different folks in different ways and how Gabby becomes this central figure. There's a great piece by Kathleen McElroy, incredible Black woman, comms Scholar, who talks about how the cultural struggle that's older than the modern Olympics is the trials and tribulations of Black women's hair. Like, the idea of all these things are merging in this space. I'm more fascinated how social media conversation become part of a larger kind of conversation of where we are culturally, socially, politically in many ways that start with somebody edges.
DR. SHEPPARD: But I really like that point, Courtney, about who is not invited into the conversation and then therefore, what the scale of the Olympics does to create openings - not welcomed openings. Which is why when it gets to be 2016 and she hasn't put he hand- it’s like, "We let you come back in here." And so, "You're not performing in the ways that we want you to." And so, it becomes a larger white discourse about patriotism as opposed to a 2012 when it's about beauty standards and as you said, or general care standards, or more particularly her relationship to her sport, to her sense of self to all of these things that are not shrouded in melodrama or faith. When she goes makes that memoir, a.k.a. "The Diary 0 - 4," it's basically about like a "leap of faith," a "leap of gold," "Jesus," "God." Like, 'cause she has not found anything else, right? Her faith is the narrative as opposed to anything more substantial because she hasn't been given time and space to be substantial.
AMIRA: 2016 is an interesting moment because this is when Simone Biles makes her first Olympic appearance. In the beginning, it seemed like there was room for both Gabby and Simone. I mean, they were teammates.
Commentator (Archival): Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman won team gold in Rio.
AMIRA: Simone was definitely the new star. Even the youngest gymnasts could see it.
YOUNG GYMNAST: Once I saw Gabby Douglas, I was like, "Okay, she's pretty good." And then I saw this girl named Simone Biles and I was like, "Oh, my God! She's so good. I want to be exactly like her."
AMIRA: And then at the Rio games, Gabby was accused of being jealous and unpatriotic.
Tweet 1: "Gabby Douglas just standing there and not placing her hand over her heart while our anthem played was UN-olympic. #respect #rio2016"
Tweet 2: Gabby Douglas should have placed her hand over heart during the National Anthem when she received her Gold Medal. Disrespectful."
Tweet 3: "There is NO excuse as to why you could not salute the flag of the country that gave you the opportunity to compete #Rio2016"
AMIRA: While Simone was positioned as the new “it” girl.
TV Host 3 (Archival): Was it a mean girls’ moment at the Rio Olympics when Gabby Douglas threw shade at Simone Biles for her gold medal win in the individual all-round women’s competition? "You can’t sit with us" was clearly all over Gabby Douglas’s face...
AMIRA: There is a shift from Gabby to Simone. These two great gymnasts' paths crossed and suddenly it seemed like there was only room for one Black girl at the top of this sport.
DR. SHEPPARD: And so, I was wondering why publicly, we do not talk about Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles at the same time - since it's not a situation of so much time has passed between the two. You actually have them on the same team at the 2016 Olympics. You have a very, very close connective lineage. The ascendancy of Simone Biles as a singular sporting figure well beyond anybody on any team in the history of the sport did much to both illuminate her as an exceptional athlete, while also like eclipsing the fact that we also just had this other exceptional athlete. In America and particularly sports and our sort of public imagination, we’re so invested in firsts that it's so interesting that we do not remember or celebrate this major first within the sport.
AMIRA: Well, I think that something we love as much as we love first, right is when there's “only". It’s always fine to have one person. Actually, you need one person and one person allows you to be shielded from critiques. One person is like proof of meritocracy and bootstraps and all this stuff. You just need one good Black person. What happens when there's more than one? 'Cause that becomes an equation that's a little more unsettling I think to institutions, because that actually represents like a change in the equation where you might actually be doing something that's additive and not this swap in and swap out. Part of that is because Simone was really good and is a generational talent, for sure. But Gabby was also really good! She's second to Simone and the other major lead up competitions.
Commentator 2 (Archival): Very clean... A good start for Gabby.
Commentator 3 (Archival): Folks, that was unbelievable! Look at this. This is a back flip with a full twist. And it is darn near perfect. The landing... boom!
Commentator 4 (Archival): We’ve got Simone Biles taking the Gold. Gabrielle Douglas taking silver and…
AMIRA: And I think that there is something in that: is there room for two black girls at the top of a sport at any given time? When I think of that question: what happened to Gabby? I think she was right there, but she became disposable.
DR. COX: Gabby's mistake, they're reading as coming back in 2016, when she needed to be frozen in 2012 as the first. And the audacity to come back and still want to compete in the sport that you've built your entire life on is like, "Ooh! You're not the girl anymore." So, this idea of there's a couple of Black girls, so now there's too many or that's the only way you can win is a very interesting read on a historical moment that is about the absolute scarcity of Blackness in this particular sport. And so, I'm seeing all these things kind of mingle together, and my mind is on some sides very blown because of how this transition from first to only - how quickly it can happen. How quickly it can become a problem. I think about what the next generation of gymnasts might feel in watching this transition from Gabby to Simone and how many girls are inspired to get into gymnastics because of them. And then I think about how that is going to be rendered some other kind of problem or rapidly commodified, as we've seen at the college level so far.
TV Host 4 (Archival): This pair of U.S. gymnasts and P&G athletes Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles. Good morning, ladies. So good to have you here!
Gabby and Simone (Together) (Archival): Good morning!
TV Host 4 (Archival): Gabby giving you any good advice? I know you're teammates.
Simone Biles (Archival): Yes.
TV Host 4 (Archival): And probably rivals a little bit.
Simone Biles (Archival): Uh not so much. [laughs]
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Yeah, we're not catty like that.
Simone Biles (Archival): Yeah we try to keep it fun.
AMIRA: In the lead up to 2016, so many of their interviews and their framing and stuff like that is built right on this kind of forced connection. Whereas we can see in juxtaposition with Jordan and Simone, Biles and Chiles, that that is a familial relationship. Jordan moved to train with Simone and their best friends where you can see how fiercely they fight to remain tied together not in opposition but as a duo.
JORDAN CHILES: "Oh look, it's Biles and Chiles, a dynamic duo! The best friends out there! Competing..." Doing this, doing that... But we've gone through so much… like sisters.
AMIRA: There is potential to sever Simone from that lineage to see only what she like accomplished and weaponize that against Gabby’s choices. To say like, look at Simone who has like leaned into her Blackness, who spoke up more effectively versus everything Gabby didn’t do. And for me, a moment that crystallizes that is when Gabby and Simone have like one of their only public exchanges. November 2017. Aly Raisman - of course, two-time Olympian, a survivor of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse - Aly shared a message on Twitter that told people to stop shaming sexual abuse victims for the clothes they choose to wear. Gabby responded:
Tweet: "It is our responsibility as women to dress modestly and be classy. Dressing in a provocative/sexual way entices the wrong crowd."
AMIRA: And Simone quote tweeted:
Tweet: "Shocks me that I’m seeing this but it doesn’t surprise me... honestly seeing this brings me to tears [because] as your teammate I expected more from you"
AMIRA: And that was this kind of moment they had been careful to sidestep before that.
DR. COX: For me, one of the ways I've been trying to think through, understand, maybe love on Gabby from afar is understanding in that moment with the tweet, part of what she might have been trying to re inscribe for herself - the ways that she felt like she had done something wrong, right? The way that she was processing her own trauma was through this very respectable way. And at the time, I just thought it was so harmful because I was like, "These girls have already been through so much. These women are doing the most to really take down these massive entities. And to hear that from your own is just heartbreaking." And then I realized - my heart broke twice, right - is to understand that she was like, "I got to uphold black excellence." And I thought about how that weight operates in so many different ways - it can be so destructive. And so, I think about what it means this moment of Simone... of folks that are like, "I'm excellent and so excellent so that I will prioritize me over everything. That's my version of excellence." Or magic, or whatever you want to call it. And so, I think about like what this new generation is bringing, right? In terms of joy, in terms of their performance style, in terms of all these things. But I think it's rooted in rejecting that perfection.
DR. SHEPPARD: When I go back and I watch Gabby talk to Oprah, she is so trying to be perfect. Oprah's like, "Oh, you had to get disciplined? You got your phone taken away?"
Oprah (Archival): And I heard there was a punishment where the cell phone got taken away.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Yeah...
Oprah (Archival): What had you done?
Gabby Douglas (Archival): I just needed a little attitude adjustment. [laughs]
Oprah (Archival): What was going on there?
Natalie Hawkins (Gabby's Mom) (Archival): She was homesick.
Oprah (Archival): Yeah?
Natalie Hawkins (Archival): That's funny, right? This is how she acts out. She wanted to come home...
Oprah (Archival): Yeah?
Natalie Hawkins (Archival): So, she was refusin' to go to the gym. [laughs]
Oprah (Archival): Woah.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): Oh, yeah.
DR. SHEPPARD: Because you have to earn refusal in that. You just quitting, fine. Then we never know who you were. You never have what it took anyways, and it turns the sport back to what it should be. But do we want a bunch of Black girls running into the sport? Is that what we want? Perhaps this sport is not compatible... with doing just work for Black women. How could it be? I'm interested in seeing what Bile’s career looks like in five years after this. And in part because of what happened to Gabby. 'Cause what you said to me is like talk about her disposability, it just hit something for me. 'Cause then I got like, actually just super sad. Because I had to think to myself what it means to be in your young- like in your twenties but like to sit there and be like, “What do I do with myself?” It'll be interesting to see how she is remembered. Like, how Gabby was and is in certain ways forgotten.
AMIRA: Sam, Courtney, and I spoke for over two hours. And we touched on what Gabby’s been up to lately. Because, for real, whatever did happen to Gabby? Well, in February 2021, Gabby, whose Dougie had previously been immortalized, won the first season of The Masked Dancer as Cotton Candy.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never trained with a mask on. It was the first time performing and not being judged. I had so much fun. And I’m so grateful and so honored.
AMIRA: For her reentry into the public performance space, her identity was hidden. A fact that Gabby said made her feel free. Then on YouTube, she hosted "Strive," a documentary about refugees competing in the Tokyo Olympics.
Gabby Douglas (Archival): This summer, more than 2,000 athletes from over 200 countries will come together in Tokyo for the 32nd Olympic Games. But not every athlete will be representing the country they were born in.
AMIRA: Also that year, in the midst of mental health conversations in and outside of sports, Gabby wrote an article for Interview Magazine. In it, she talked to her friend, and former elite gymnast Nia Dennis. At the time, Nia was competing for UCLA’s gymnastics team and her most recent floor routine had gone viral. It had showcased Nia’s athleticism. And it featured music by Tupac, Missy, Kendrick Lemar, and Meg the Stallion. It was hella Black. It was intentional. It was wonderful. Nia’s floor music from her viral routines was completely different from what Gabby’s music was giving during her career.
DR. COX: Part of Gabby's style that is so beautiful to watch, even now, is she's so crisp, she's so technical. It's so beautiful. Her floor routines are stunning without music because I hate all of her musical choices because she's so good without it. I prefer to watch her on uneven or balance because I think that I can just enjoy the crisp technical stuff in a particular way. With the floor routine, I'm like, "Are you listening to the music? Are you into it?" And there's a distance, and I think that she's lived in that distance.
AMIRA: Their contrasting floor music is a representation of how Gabby and Nia’s lives went in different directions. In the magazine article, Gabby congratulates Nia for her success as a collegiate athlete. And Gabby gives us some insight into her own career as an elite gymnast. She writes:
"Even though I’m grateful for everything from the sport, it does have its pros and its cons, because it doesn’t really prepare you for life in general. It’s only the mindset of: win, win, win, win, win. It is instilled and ingrained in us to win. And when we don’t, we have this huge feeling of, 'I’m worth nothing, I’m replaceable.'"
AMIRA: Further on in the article, Gabby says this about elite gymnastics:
"Hopefully they’ll change and realize that we’re humans, too, at the end of the day. We’re not just machines, we actually have emotions that need to be expressed and not bottled up."
AMIRA: And Nia cosigns with:
"Say it again, girl, for the people in the back."
PREVIEW
AMIRA: In the next episode of American Prodigies you’ll meet Nia Dennis and Sophina Dejesus. Unlike Gabby, these two former elite gymnasts went to college. Sophina and Nia catapulted themselves to visibility and thrived under a different spotlight.
SOPHINA DEJESUS: I looked at my phone 'cause I didn't have my phone and it was like blowing up.
NIA DENNIS: I woke up and my phone was going cr-azy. Like, ding, ding, ding! Non-stop.
SOPHINA DEJESUS: I got to go on Ellen for the second time in my life
NIA DENNIS: Like, literally I was shook. I got a shout out from Obama. What?
CREDITS
AMIRA: This episode of American Prodigies was reported and hosted by me, Amira Rose Davis. Story editing and production by Jessica Luther.
If you want to hear more of my interviews with gymnasts, subscribe to Blue Wire's Apple Podcast Subscription Channel. Along with ad-free episodes, you can listen to my full interview with Elizabeth “EB” Price.
Search "Blue Wire" in Apple Podcasts for access to all the extended interviews. It's free for the first seven days. Subscribe today.
This episode featured archival audio from FOX, NBC Sports, Hot 97, The Wendy Williams Show, ABC News, OWN, The 700 Club, the Barbie Youtube Channel, Non Juan LLC, Team USA, CBS News, Buzz60, Universal Sports, Today, Youtube Originals, and UCLA Athletics.
Jessica Bodiford and Kelly Hardcastle Jones are our senior producers. Sound design, mix, and mastering by Camille Stennis.
Isabelle Jocelyn, Kayla Stokes and Jordan Ligons provided production assistance. Fact-checking was done by Mary Mathis and Jessica Luther. Production coordination by Devin Shepherd. And we had research help from Shwetha Surendran, Mariam Khan, and Mary Mathis. American Prodigies is executive produced by Peter Moses and Jon Yales.
POST CREDITS JOY
AMIRA: Listen, the subplot of half of "Insecure" has been Molly's wigs. Like, "Insecure" came back and I was like, "What is this wig doing?" [laughs] Like, just why can't we get it right?
DR. COX: But also... this is an aside... Molly's wig is wildly accurate to a certain type of professional Black woman.
AMIRA: Okay. Speak on it! [laughs]
DR. COX: Let’s also speak to how it is on brand. Like, there is something very authentic happening about this certain kind of wigs that high powered Black women that have a certain resonance or relationship to their Blackness that that could also be the wig.