The Alysa Liu Effect

"Begin with the hair-which, after all, Alysa Liu invites us to do. It's hardly the halo of an ice angel. Her dyed-blond and black circlets have a welcome element of scornfulness, a taunting of judgement. The hair says: Figure skating submits young women to continual verdict, assaults their self-esteem over a toe point or pound of weight, but here is someone who will not comply, who has found her own ebullient, levitating, and self-approving form."

"Liu takes all the tears in the kiss-and-cry zone-where so many skaters have suffered fierce whispers from unforgiving coaches and devastating appraisals in the form of "judge's marks"-and dries them. She repudiates an austere, traditional training system that breaks tiny dancers into pieces. At the Milan Cortino games she skated on her own terms to seize America's first Olympic women's figure skating gold medal since 2002-and became a new kind of icon, one who eats and wears whatever the hell she wants."

""I don't know how I'm going to deal with it," she said of the increased attention that was coming her way after her euphoric, spinning mirror-ball free skate to Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park " on Thursday. "Probably wigs. I'm gonna wear some wigs when I go outside." Read: Pressure is not just in your head Her performance proved that a 20-year-old woman can be strong, feathering, free, warm to her competitors, and salty all at the same time."

Alysa Liu uses defiant hair and bold presentation to reject the judgemental standards of competitive figure skating. Her dyed-blond and black circlets signal scorn toward narrow aesthetic expectations and celebrate self-approval. Liu rejected an austere training regime that can break skaters into pieces and instead skated on her own terms at the Milan Cortino games. She won America's first Olympic women's figure skating gold since 2002, completing seven triple jumps in a gold-coin-like dress. Liu had retired at 16 to avoid physical and emotional burnout and returned as a 20-year-old exemplar of strength, warmth to competitors, and unapologetic individuality. She plans to wear wigs to manage increased attention.

Read at The Atlantic