No More Ms. (N)ice Princess
Teen figure skating phenom Alexandra Trusova and the shoulders she stands on
After winning a competition in November 2019, 15-year-old figure skater Alexandra Trusova said, “I would like to compete with the men.”
Trusova is one of two teenage Russian skaters who, in the course of just one season, have flipped ladies figure skating on its head by attempting multiple quadruple jumps in their programs. In addition to her history-making technical abilities, and outspoken confidence, her skating style is not that of a traditional top ladies skater. She’s not delicate nor particularly graceful — at least not in the conventional imagination.
Watching Trusova skate, I’m always surprised to find myself on the edge of my seat. I love seeing how far she can push the limits of what I thought was possible.
While there’s certainly been criticism of Trusova and her team’s approach (including from me — the jumps she lands are hard on bodies, and she’s a kid), the ways that she contrasts with tradition have gone over relatively well. She scores high — on all aspects of her skating — and she wins.
Is her success a sign that expectations for ladies figure skaters are getting more flexible? That there’s room for more in the sport than just balletic performances, national sweethearts and polite, conciliatory losers? I certainly hope so.
For over a century, women and girls in skating have been trying to create space for themselves in the sport. Trusova stands on the shoulders of generations of women who refused to hide their personalities and conform. These women had to push back against stereotypes, racism, and body shaming, all in a judged sport in which falling out of favor with people in power can mean the end of your career.
So let’s take a walk down the ladder of shoulders holding Trusova up, and honor the skaters who created space for women to exist in skating, and have more options for how they dress, express themselves and compete.
Let’s take it wayyyyy back to the first ladies skater
Like many sports, figure skating started out primarily as a pastime for men. Yet it was also one of the earliest sports to allow high-level competition for women. Figure skating was the only women’s sport in the Winter Olympics until 1936.
In 1902, British skater Madge Syers was the first woman to compete at the figure skating world championships — after she noticed that the rules did not specify the sex of competitors. She won silver, and women were promptly banned from the competition under the guise of concerns about skirt lengths inhibiting judges from seeing women’s feet as they competed.
Undeterred, Madge shortened her skirt.
While Syers was certainly a game-changer, she also leaned into the traditional ideas of gender presentation to sell the idea that women should be allowed to skate competitively. In The Book of Winter Sports, she wrote, “Skating is an exercise particularly appropriate for women; it requires not so much strength as grace, combined with a fine balance, and the ability to move the feet rapidly.” She goes on to say that Englishmen are, “slow and heavy skaters.” Which…same.
By 1906 women’s figure skating existed as its own discipline at the world championships.
On costumes and the policing of skaters’ bodies
The battle over women’s costumes that began with Syers at the 1902 World Championships has been continually contested. At the Olympics in 1920, American skater Theresa Weld was reprimanded when she added a single salchow jump that caused her skirt to fly up and *GASP* expose her knees.
As skaters got younger and more technical in the following decades, skirt lengths shortened. But the debate over ~risqué~ costumes continued.
By the 1980s, East German skater Katarina Witt was pushing the boundaries of ladies skating costumes. She competed in pants at the 1983 European Championships and then, in 1988, in a skirt-less leotard.
That costume led to the Katarina Rule which required women to compete in costumes that cover their hips and butt. That rule is no longer in place, but the current rules state that costumes must be modest, dignified and appropriate (all of which are subjective).
American skater Ashley Wagner skated a show program in something akin to high-waisted swimsuit bottoms, as did Russian skater Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, but no skaters have competed with their upper legs so exposed since Witt. (I mean, she was wearing tights under those leotard-esque bottoms so they’re not really exposed, are they?)
In addition to costumes, ladies skaters’ bodies are also under close scrutiny. Canadian skater, and 2017 world bronze medalist Gabby Daleman has spoken about how, when she was growing up, people told her that she would never be an elite skater because of her body type. “I have broader shoulders than most figure skaters. I have muscles, I have bigger legs, and so it was ‘You’re not pretty enough, you’re not graceful enough.’ It was just a whole list of stuff, why I shouldn’t be a skater,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
As a consequence of these attitudes, and the fact that many skaters see more athletic success at lower body weights, eating disorders are common across genders in the sport. Daleman herself has been open about her experience with an eating disorder as have skaters from the U.S., Russia (including skaters from the rink where Trusova trains), and Japan in recent years.
“In some clubs, the coaches weigh you before practice. And still some call the girls ‘pig’ or ‘fat’ when they gain,” Japanese figure skater Akiko Suzuki said in an interview with Reuters in 2018.
With more and more skaters having public conversations about the dangers of eating disorders, there is a hope that the culture can shift away from women and girls from starving themselves in pursuit of success.
As in all aspects of society, race is inextricably linked to how we view the appropriateness of female skater’s bodies. Racist stereotypes and perceptions often lead Black women to be sexually objectified more often than white women. In the same year as Witt’s skirt-less costume, American skater Debi Thomas, a Black woman, competed in a bodysuit with long black pants and sleeves. A new rule requiring women to compete in skirts was instituted.
That rule was changed in 2004, and bodysuits are now relatively common. Alexandra Trusova seems to like them.
The gender politics of jumping
Speaking of Trusova, her technical prowess is also a continuation of how women and girls have had to fight for their right to attempt jumps on-par with men. The sport has come a long way since Weld was punished for her salchow, but the technical side of ladies skating has progressed much slower than mens. Men have been competing quadruple jumps at the senior level since 1988; ladies, by contrast, did not land them in competition until 2019.
That’s not a new trend. The first man landed a triple jump ten years before the first woman did. In her book Culture on Ice: Figure Skating and Cultural Meaning, Ellyn Kestnbaum wrote, “In the 1950s and 1960s, triples served as a marker of masculine athleticism in a sport that had already established a reputation as ‘feminine,’ differentiating the men’s approach to the sport from that of its lady participants.”
A common argument for the lag in ladies’ technical ability is that men’s bodies are built to jump higher and rotate faster than women’s bodies.
Now, I wasn’t great at physics in high school, so I don’t really know if hips make it 10+ years harder to rotate, but I am a human living in the world and I know that women with narrow hips exist, and they’re not magically throwing out quads all the time. And also are male skater’s hips even really narrower than women’s or are women’s waists just sometimes smaller?
I may know nothing, but I still feel like this argument is bullshit, and that the reality is more about the expectations for ladies skaters and how the discipline is judged. As Kestnbaum wrote of the early triples era, “Judging and training of female skaters placed more emphasis on graceful movement, while triple jumps carried more weight on the male side of the sport.”
It is more common in men’s skating for a skater to be viewed as both artistic and athletic. In the current men’s field, top skaters Nathan Chen, Yuzuru Hanyu, and Shoma Uno can all be categorized as both. In the current ladies field, Russian teen Alena Kostornaia is probably the most well-balanced in artistry and technical skills, but even she is viewed more artistically than athletically and she doesn’t attempt quad jumps like her training mates. There is a history of technically talented teens evolving into artistic women, like Italy’s Carolina Kostner, but typically they have lost technical traction as they age.
Japan’s Midori Ito, who competed at the senior level from 1983 to 1996, was such an impressive jumper that people began to reconsider the idea that gender division in technical abilities were inherent. Ito was the first woman to land a triple-triple combination as well as a triple axel. Quoted in Sports Illustrated in 1992, American coach Evy Scotvold said, “The only man I’ve ever seen outjump her is Brian Boitano.”
Despite her technical success, Ito was still haunted by racist and sexist beauty standards and her artistry and femininity were criticized. “I like jumps because they bring me the greatest pleasure,” she said, as quoted in Newsweek in 1992. “All I can really do is jump. Figure skating is a matter of beauty, and Westerners are so stylish, so slender. I wish I could be beautiful like them.”
The determination of Ito to push the technical side of ladies figure skating has inspired generations of women in Japan, and around the world, to try to land a triple axel. That process started slow, but picked up in recent years. Ito landed her first triple axel in international competition in 1988. Thirty years later, at the start of 2018, only six women (including Ito) had successfully done the jump. In the two years since, the jump has become more common in the ladies field, particularly among young skaters, bringing the total number up to 11. Just like quad jumps, the rate of successful triple axels is accelerating faster than any technical advancement that I can recall in ladies skating.
If this trend continues, and it certainly seems like it will, the sport will need to adjust to make the rules and scoring of ladies skating more equal to that of mens. Currently, women are not allowed to attempt quad jumps in short programs which is the primary reason why Trusova wants to compete with the men.
Rejecting perfection and refusing to be quiet
Trusova’s unfiltered competitiveness is also accepted, in part, because of her predecessors. In recent skating history, I don’t think there has been anyone as effective at challenging expectations for skater’s off-ice behavior and voice than Ashley Wagner.
Tradition dictates that ladies skaters are soft-spoken and gracious. In 1992, coach and retired Olympic gold medalist Carol Heiss was quoted in Newsweek as saying, “I always tell my girls: think like a man, but act and look like a woman.”
Wagner, who retired in 2018, was never afraid to speak up when she felt like she was wronged — or that a situation was wrong.
She was one of few athletes to speak out against anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia before competing in the Sochi Olympics. She said, “I’m absolutely furious” after receiving low scores at U.S. Nationals in 2018. And she has been outspoken, and deeply personal, in calling for more protections for skaters against abuse.
At what was perhaps the height of her career, media coverage of U.S. figure skating pitted Wagner against Gracie Gold, with Gold as America’s classy sweetheart and Wagner as her brash, “bad-girl” foil.
In the meantime, Gold was dealing with an eating disorder, depression and thoughts of suicide. Wagner noticed that something was wrong, and went to officials. “She went out of her way to tell somebody,” Gold said in an interview with Access, “And I was amazed because no one else probably did, and of all people, for it to be Ashley meant a lot.”
In her recovery, Gold has spoken about how challenging it was to try and fit into the expectation of perfection that came with being a top ladies skater.
“I almost created this other person,” Gold told the New York times, “I wanted to be the most flawless, angelic, plastic, Barbie-doll-face human who just says all the right things and does all the right things.”
She returned to competition this season, and is bluntly honest in interviews — more in the vein of Wagner than the Barbie-Gold of the past.
Like Gold and Wagner, Canada’s Gabby Daleman has also refused to be silent on difficult issues. Daleman regularly speaks about being bullied for a learning disability, body shaming, eating disorders and her experience with anxiety and depression. This generation of skaters seems less willing to hide behind the veneer of perfection that has historically been expected of them, and I hope that their voices will encourage younger skaters to do the same.
The ladies figure skater of the future
Though the image of a ladies skater has opened up considerably over time, there is still more work to be done to create space for a more diverse range of identities.
In December 2019, Amber Glenn became the first currently-competing ladies skater to come out as queer. She identifies as bisexual/pansexual, and she told the Dallas Voice that, “The fear of not being accepted is a huge struggle for me.” The response to Glenn’s coming out has widely been positive with fans waving a rainbow flag when she competed at both U.S. Nationals and the Four Continents Championship this year.
But there is still more to be done to ensure that ladies skaters of all sexual identities feel safe being out. In a similar vein, the sport needs to do more to make space for trans women to be safely out and competing at the highest levels.
Women and girls competing in pairs skating and ice dance also face unique challenges and sexist expectations that should be addressed.
My dream Olympics and Worlds and Nationals are full of ladies skaters who look different, sound different, care about different things, perform super difficult jumps, have quality skating skills, and just generally are great skaters who feel able to express themselves without the pressure to be a picture-perfect lady.
There is so much work to do. But luckily we can build on the examples of generations of women and girls who pushed the culture of the sport to be more accepting.
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Special thank you to Mara and Bronwyn for their skating brains and to Lauren and Rachel for their generous editing.
