Hi!
I was noodling on a few topics for this week, but I decided to save them for later, because really how can we talk about anything besides the Olympics?
At first, I thought I’d write about the Olympics and fashion. I jotted down notes about Ralph Lauren’s designs for Team USA (bad), Mongolia’s Opening Ceremony outfits (incredible), how J.Crew smartly capitalized on Olympic fervor without encroaching on RL’s license by partnering with USA Swimming. How LVMH turned their sponsorship of the Games into their own Super Bowl-level commercial (despite the Olympics not allowing advertising in its stadiums).
Then I thought maybe I’d continue my exploration of Eastern Pennsylvania as a secret nook of American fashion and discuss the Reading, Pennsylvania-based company, GK Elite, and how they designed the USA Women’s competition leotards. Each athlete gets eight leotards that have over 47,000 Swarovski crystals on them and, according to designer Jeanne Diaz, were inspired by French Art Nouveau design motifs, Georges Seurat’s pointillism painting technique, and the 1996 Magnificent Seven’s iconic uniforms.
But then I realized I could still name all of the Magnificent Seven off of the top of my head: Dominique, Dominique, Shannon, Amy, Amanda, Jaycie, and of course, Kerri. And like when you give a mouse a cookie, this reminded me of the one summer I begged to go to an elite gymnastics camp (I was not an elite gymnast), just to meet Shannon Miller and Kerri Strug.
It’s not an exaggeration to say I was a major Olympics fan growing up. I’m talking athletes’ life stories memorized, gymnastics routines made up on my couch while I watched, posters on my walls, Sports Illustrated for Kids trading cards torn out of the summer and winter issues and carried in my backpack. I was obsessed. With all of it. In fact, I have a distinct memory (fear?) of watching the Atlanta Games (summer of the aforementioned Magnificent Seven) when I was 11 and worrying that I didn’t have that many Olympics left to enjoy as a kid. I figured maybe I’d get Sydney, and then I’d definitely be too old to fangirl over them as I did.
I’m so glad I was so wrong. Now, to be honest, there are some Games that I’ve paid less attention to over the years. I am busier as an adult than I was as an eleven year old. I’m also more cynical, so as the Olympics gear up every two years (can I just say how excited I was when that happened?) I wonder if this will be the Games where I just don’t care that much anymore. What, with climate change, and war, and economic issues, and political issues, and yada yada yada taking up all that brain space. The Olympics can seem willfully (woefully?) frivolous, in comparison.
But then the Opening Ceremonies begin. And the NBC packaged stories. And the commercials. (How does every Olympics commercial just hit? I’m not crying, you’re crying.) And I realize, again, I was wrong.
The Olympics aren’t frivolous. They are everything. These athletes represent all of our ridiculous efforts as human beings to believe in ourselves, chase unwieldy dreams, obsess over the little things, make huge impacts, win, lose, fight, quit, soar.
In my house we like to say that sports are total devastation with no actual stakes. We say this on Sunday mornings when the tears are flowing after tough losses or strikeouts or dropped fly balls at our sons’ baseball games. We say this somewhat as a joke but mostly with deep admiration because it teaches our boys to handle absolute heartbreak in what amounts to more or less a safe space.
The stakes seem real, but they’re not life and death. They are all just part of the game.
The inverse is also true. The pleasure of competition, the joy of a bat perfectly connecting with the ball, the delight in running as fast as you possibly can, the personal satisfaction in preparing yourself to meet your biggest moment and achieving your goal (Hello, Stephen Nedoroscik, Mr. Pommel Horse 2024!), the complete euphoria of victory. We all seek to feel these emotions as we navigate our journeys on this planet. And sports gives them to us, in spades. At every age. At every level. Recreationally or professionally. Whether you play badly. Or you are the best in the world. Whether you are an athlete or a fan (or both, I see you Michael Phelps), sports let us feel what it means to be human.
Which brings me back to that gymnastics camp. It was, shall we say, not the right fit. It was the first time I can remember feeling truly intimidated. But beyond that, bored. I didn’t want to spend my day learning how to do the perfect cartwheel. I wasn’t a competitive gymnast, I did it for fun. And I wanted to flip and twist and spin with abandon, even if my toes weren’t pointed. Once I met my heroes during the first week of the two-week camp, I begged my parents to pick me up early. They graciously did, and, in the process, my dad taught me the valuable lesson of sunk cost.1 I consider this camp to be the first thing in my life I truly quit (excluding all the instruments I quickly abandoned because I was born without a musical bone in my body), and in doing so, I learned how and when to quit. Sports allowed me to figure this out without any real consequences (reminder: sunk cost), and I’ve gone on to quit many things in my life, freeing me to pursue the paths that bring me success and joy.
Maybe next week I will write about fashion and the Olympics (leave me a comment if there’s anything you’d like me to explore). But right now, I just want to watch these world-class athletes jump, spin, swim, run, vault, wrestle, fence, kayak, bike, grunt, cry, and sweat their way to victory. Or defeat. Or somewhere in between (go for the bronze!). I want to feel like nothing matters more than who won women’s rugby sevens.
(Speaking of women’s rugby sevens, please go follow Ilona Maher on social media. Actually, maybe that’s what I will write about next week: the kickass female athletes who are dominating the social media, fashion, and pop culture landscape right now, in addition to dominating their competition. See also: Yeji Kim.)
We’ll see.
For now, let’s relish in the delight of being fans.
Go sports! Happy Olympics!
x Lindsay
Sunk costs are expenses that have already been incurred and which are unrecoverable. Sunk costs are typically not included in consideration when making future decisions, as they are seen as irrelevant to current and future budgetary concerns. The sunk cost fallacy is a psychological barrier that ties people to unsuccessful endeavors simply because they've committed resources to it. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp