Congratulations to Shizuka Arakawa, who did what's gotten really hard to do under the new system of scoring: not fall on her ass.
When Sasha Cohen finished skating, one of the announcers said something like, "Other girls skate to 'Romeo and Juliet,' Sasha is Juliet." And a million people must have made wisecracks along the lines of: you remember the part in the play when Juliet falls on her ass.
The announcers say some of the most awkward things. For example, when Kimmie Meissner was skating, they started raving about how long her arms were and said, "Other skaters would give their eye teeth for those long arms." So I'm picturing young women with missing teeth and ultra-long arms. You don't want that!
But let's discuss the costumes! It was one thing for Irina Slutskaya to fall on her ass and not win -- or even equal the on-ass-falling Cohen, but quite another for the pantie end of her garish red and black skating dress to ride all the way up into the crack of her ass until it looked like a thong. And she still had to spin with one big leg clutched in the straight upright position and skate backward with the skirt fluttering up and the ass coming straight at us at high speed.
I praised Slutskaya for wearing a unitard for her short program, but, as we discussed in the comments, it was not a pretty enough unitard. The lower end of it flared out into mannish pantlegs, losing the leotard effect, and the top was too enclosed. A commenter apty compared the outfit to a wetsuit.
But last night, one of the skaters had an exemplary unitard. Sorry, I've forgotten her name, and I'd like to find a picture. It was black leotard with some nice red swirly, glittery decoration, with a lot of illusion fabric used to make it look very naked at the top and all down one side of the torso. This is the unitard that must lead us into the future of ladies' skating fashion!
ADDED: The photo of the unitard that will lead us:
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41 comments:
I found Shizuka Arakawa's costume incredibly distracting. At times it looked great, but other times I was very much reminded of Mr Two-Face in the old Dick Tracy comics.
And that 'Sasha is Juliet'. Ugh. Well, sports commentators aren't exactly known for their originality -- although I really enjoy listening to Dick Button.
Dick Button was better years ago when he did the commentary solo. He would talk about the details and make it possible for us viewers to perceive more of what the skater is doing. It seemed more like a sport then, because he was criticizing the skaters, even when, superficially, they seemed pretty good. Now, it seems, they just want us to feel the performance -- especially if the skater is American. I find that insipid. They've buttoned down Button.
The outfit you liked was worn by Sarah Meier, a swiss skater (German speaking if you can call that goofy sounding dialect 'German') who's never quite made it to the top (despite some occasionally really good performances). I agree it was striking in a very, good way the best unitard of the competition (Slutskaya had a much better one last year with flare bottoms but sleeveless top with a pink heart at the waist, adorable).
Worst costume was Japanese skater Fumie Suguri's, the cut was entirely wrong for her body shape (it might look wonderful on some skater but it made Suguri look square and dumpy.
The ladies competition can be beautiful or agonizing, but is almost never boring. For fans, it was the most exciting competition of this olympics since the others resembled grim coronation marches to predictable gold medals with secondary fights for the silver and bronze. It was also the best judged by a wide margin in that the placements and margins most closely resembled the performances.
Despite her disastrous beginning Cohen pulled herself together admirably and the final 3 minutes were high quality stuff.
All today, I've been playing Mean Catty Biatch on my blog, by commenting on three figure skater's mugs.
In case of interest:
One: Irina Slutskaya
Two: Emily Hughes
Three: Arakawa
P.S.: Woohoo! As I write, someone just won the Bronze in the Men's Curling.
Lest Ann, and others have it TiVo'ed for later, I won't spoil the "score". ;)
Cheers,
Victoria
you remember the part in the play when Juliet falls on her ass.
No, but I remember the part where her nurse said "Thou shalt fall backward when thou hast more wit, shalt thou not, Jule?"
although I really enjoy listening to Dick Button.
Usually I would agree.
But last night, he was incredibly bitter to the point of nastiness.
I forget the skater, but he criticised everything from her posture, to her costume, to her skate laces!
I noticed he got really quiet after that, almost as if NBC got on the horn, and told Scott Hamilton to shut him up.
Cheers,
Victoria
I've often wondered if falling on one's ass couldn't be a compulsory element of the short program. Just as wrestlers are given points for escaping a hold, the skaters would get points for how gracefully they pulled themselves off the ice and started skating again.
it might look wonderful on some skater but it made Suguri look square and dumpy.
Oh! I think that's the skater Button went ballistic about. She had a disastrous programme, and yes, awkward costumery.
Interestingly, at first I was quite disappointed with Sasha Cohen's red, vaguely Tsarist costume (at first blush, her embroider looked like double eagles), but then it grew on me.
It's fine to be daring in the short programme, like Slutskaya unitard, or the peacock blue outfit Cohen wore, but for the long programme, classic is always best.
Arakawa's outfit was very similar to her long programme:
Smart, but uninspiring.
Cheers,
Victoria
I've often wondered if falling on one's ass couldn't be a compulsory element of the short program.
If that's all it takes, I can bring home the gold!
Cheers,
Victoria
I forget the skater, but he criticised everything from her posture, to her costume, to her skate laces!
See, that's what I like! I almost always recognize what he's harping about, and usually agree. Suguri's costuming was atrocious and I didn't think her skating conveyed any emotion.
They made a big point of how Sasha Cohen's eyes looked tentative at the beginning -- but not a peep about Slutskaya's, and I thought both skaters had the same deer-in-headlights look! Neither looked happy to be there.
"Oh! I think that's the skater Button went ballistic about. She had a disastrous programme, and yes, awkward costumery."
I'm not in the US so I didn't hear Button, but maybe you're thinking of Miki Ando, a former jr world champion who's struggled all season. (also ugly costume, kind of light blue and strange).
Suguri was the Japanese skater in purple, I'd say her LP was not disastrous at all, but rather good and just missed winning bronze.
See, that's what I like! I almost always recognize what he's harping about, and usually agree.
Well, admittedly, his tough commentating makes up for the powder-puff, rah-rah quality Scott Hamilton has in general.
It's good that he sounds like he's never met a skater he didn't like, but sometimes Scott can be a little too vanilla.
Suguri's costuming was atrocious and I didn't think her skating conveyed any emotion.
I saw so many skaters, it's become one huge blur, today.
Although, I did just keep thinking of that sanitary napkin remark on that other thread.
They made a big point of how Sasha Cohen's eyes looked tentative at the beginning -- but not a peep about Slutskaya's, and I thought both skaters had the same deer-in-headlights look! Neither looked happy to be there.
Oh yes, absolutely.
Slutskaya, I don't -- she didn't seem focused in either this event, or the short programme.
Both had a "what comes, comes" attitude to them, perhaps in line with her newfound maturity about her mum's illness, that skating is not the most important thing out there, in this world.
(BTW, nice segments by NBC this Olympics. The Slutskaya intro before she skated, really made her story come alive to the audience)
With Cohen, well, it was different, IMHO.
Her practise skate, minutes before her programme, was a disaster, and you just got the feeling she wasn't going to win the gold, right then and there.
Cheers,
Victoria
Miki Ando
Ahh, yes! Thanks.
It wasn't other skaters who would want those long arms, it was ballerinas. I was struck by how much more difficult skating is for the taller women -- mostly because my own very-tall-for-her-age daughter has been making noises about wanting to figure skate.
Personally I detested the jumpsuit; it had way too much illusion fabric for my taste. For my taste, it wouldn't have any! And what was up with the one black glove? That was just a bit precious. I suppose I might've liked the jumpsuit better if the skater had performed better in it.
As I said last night, Dick Buttons was awesome, and I wished he would talk more and the others not at all, even though Scott Hamilton said something valuable once in a while. The woman (Tracy?) was completely horrible, that remark about Juliet being just the worst of many banal comments.
I enjoyed this competition tremendously. It was nice to see the medals being awarded in a way that corresponded to reality. Even though Sasha fell, she got her groove back and skated beautifully. Irina started strong but tanked after she fell -- and I had to laugh at Ann's comments about Irina's wedgie, because I never noticed it at all!
If every Olympic event were like this one, I'd watch more. As it is, I'm glad they'll be over soon.
Dick Button is an interesting guy. In addition to being a two-time Olympic gold medalist, he is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He's a foot smarter than any other Olympic broadcaster, in my opinion. Bob Costas is the only other broadcaster in his league, but he doesn't do "play-by-play" anymore.
Between your comment the other day about the "maxipad" look of the costume and the thong comparison today, you've really ruined the joy of just watching the skating and competition.
"Once I saw Sasha Cohen fall on her ass, I crashed and slept through the night." Like you, I turned it off after Cohen fell, albeit for other reasons.
But what interested me about your post was your word choice and use of language, and particularly the variations on the phrase "fell on her ass." As I read your post and the comments to it, the constant "ass" refrain sounded a bit off -- although obviously quite accurate. It was a blunt, crude and slightly vulgar way to describe Cohen's misfortunes, certainly more so than what one typically would read in a sportswriter's article about the incident, while at the same time being exactly what I blurted out when I was watching the event. (But if my young kids had been watching with me, I think I would have been more careful in my language.)
I realize that your word choice here is tame indeed compared with what passes for the norm at the really rabid political blogs. But still it seems to point to a difference between blog-writing and other forms of public speech, where different conventions of taste and disretion seem to be applicable. Why is it that blog writing seems to have more of the character of a purely private exercise -- like my blurting out loud to the TV that Cohen had just plotzed on her butt -- compared, say, to the sportswriter? Even more than classic journalism, blog writing is, in intent and effect, the most public of all forms of communication, since the act of posting sends it on its way to a vast potential audience.
Or perhaps it could just be me, in that these unoffensive Chaucerian locutions are the norm in public speech today and I've just not noticed.
And The Olympic Gold for using the word Ass in one post goes to.....
Seriously though, I noticed Slutskaya's crack and thought they wore something back there to prevent that so the judges wouldn't be distracted.
Thanks to you, now I can't help look at the skaters and not visualize what YOU talked about with their leg raised all the time coming at the camera.
I really had been watching the skating :)
I absolutely loathe the announcers, as I have said before. I guess it's Buttons who has now become the Official Bitch and carps about everybody and every little thing that doesn't meet his standard of prissy excellence.
One person, speaking softly, would suffice for announcing. We can't even enjoy the music or the performance because of their ridiculous blather. "I wonder if she's thinking of her sick mother at home." To use the word once again: ass.
I agree with Joan about the Swiss skater's glittery red and black unitard with the nude mesh. I thought it was way too close to a tawdry peekaboo ice-dancing look. I'd rather see simplicity and class in the long program.
Unlike some of you, I love listening to Dick Button, who says such sharp and unexpected things. The best comment he made last night was his observation that watching some unfortunate skater's lackluster routine was like watching a souflee "unsouffle." If that's not a word, it ought to be!
Ooh, I have to leave another comment because I see that the word verification this time is secxyz.
Even the blogger-bot wants to get in on the commentary on the skaters' costumes!
My catty contribution: Slutskaya could really use some Crest White Strips.
Yeah, that was Sarah Meier with the righteous leotard! I picked her as my fave as well in the thread from yesterday.
Hmm...trying to google for a pic of it......
Well, here's one but it's not the best view of it: http://abcnews.go.com/images/Sports/nm_ice_skating_060224_sp.jpg
My first thought was "Uh oh, man your stations NBC - we might have a wardrobe malfunction!" For a moment in my alcohol buzz I'd forgotten about the illusion fabric.
The funniest was when they pointed out the one skater had her laces sticking out. They had a good point about that! They stuck out like a sore thumb.
Oops, did that image link not work?
The pic is on this page:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=1652801&page=1
David says: "The use of 'falling on her ass' is apt and not politically correct. ...'Brushing the ice with her derriere' or some such nonsense does not remotely describe what we witnessed!"
Insofar as it relates to the use of language, political correctness is all about thought control, gussied up as an exercise in not offending the sensibilities of various groups (racial, ethnic, religious, fatties, you name it -- but definitely not including white Christian or Jewish straight men). That concept has nothing to do with the "aptness" of all the "ass" refernces. As for "describ[ing] what we witnessed," "she fell" would do just fine. Given the figure skating context, anyone remotely familiar with the sport will understand perfectly well that she did not fall on her head. Nor is it clear what "feminists at Harvard" have to do with the topic.
All the "ass" talk brought into sharp relief, at least for me, the difference between the formal English normally deemed appropriate for public speech such as journalism (even on the sports page), and the much freer, often much earthier language typical of private conversation (to say nothing of street language, locker room humor, etc.). In function and intent, blogs are a form of public speech, comparable in many ways to opinion journalism. Yet the word choices and uses of language deemed appropriate for blogs is frequently the antithesis of formal English. Ann's post was an extremely mild instance of that phenomenon. Perhaps because of the quality of the writing on this site, all the "ass" references just sounded really odd in context. It's not the sort of language, for example, I would expect to hear in a classroom discussion, or to see in an academic article.
Where do blogs fit into to that public-private continuum, why are the conventions governing taste and the like so obviously different between blogs and other forms of public speech, and why do blogs fit where they do?
Perhaps the topic is not of interest. But it would be nice to discuss it without all the irrelevant cant about political correctness, feminists at Harvard and the like.
Here's the pic nice and big. Oops...I don't know how to post long links here so they don't get cut off. If you go to http://www.torino2006.org and click on "photo gallery" and then "figure skating", you'll see it.
All the feminists I know say "ass."
paintedgoat said...
"In general, I thought there was way too much Pucini......"
There can never, ever be too much Puccini no matter what the event or situation. However,{sniff}.... the mention of Puccini in the same thread referencing delicate anatomical features and such, is.. just.. not.. fitting!!! {sniff}
Anyway, I write the blog in the style of speech, as I would talk with good friends in a casual setting. Some posts on legal topics I write in the style I would use to speak to students in the classroom. The main difference is that I work harder to compress the writing into shorter, snappier phrases. In conversation, you can run on and repeat yourself. So, this is basically improved conversational speech. That's the word choice. For falling on your ass, ass is the descriptive word, conveying the bluntness of the event. "Posterior" and "derriere" are ridiculous words, which I've never used in speech. "Butt" is the only reall alternative, and it's not a natural word for me to use. When speaking to my kids when they were little, I used the term "rear end." When I was a kid, we always said "hiney," which I'd never say now.
I don't care much for any costumes made with "illusion fabric."
Like a bad hair-piece, it may look sensational to those sitting in the back rows, but once the camera zooms in it's just embarrassing.
I like this blog. I like all the topics, can't keep up with them but I like them. I like the blogger, the way she writes, the way she talks and the way she looks, not that that has anything to do with anything.
I like the language used, rather than disguise, couch, pretend, high-brow it is written just like the podcasts are spoken, as if I'm in a relaxing setting with the speaker/writer.
The podcasts are a favorite because I can sit on my ass and relax while listening/laughing/learning - sometimes sleeping - sorry bout that. Too relaxed at times...
Paul: I'd listen to my own podcasts to fall asleep to, but the theme song would wake me up, and I wouldn't like that.
I have to admit, if figure skating costumes became "tasteful" I'd be a little disappointed. This one is the perfect combination of ridiculous, yet cool.
Reading Victoria's comments about Irina reminded me of how I used to feel about poor old Mary Lou Retton--I could never get behind her as a child because her neck was just. too. thick. Petty, I know, but there it is.
Jen: LOL! My reaction exactly.
What figure skating Really needs is Simon Cowell.
I agree about the teeth & Slutskaya. The same could also be said about Arakawa. The thing is that recently we've become so accustomed to artificially whitened teeth that ordinary teeth have started to look shockingly yellow. It's really a bit of a problem.
About that illusion fabric. I think it is just fine. The fact is that the clothes have to be very securely positioned on the body, so you have to fill in those spaces. The bare look reads from any kind of distance, just not in the closeups, where it's like seeing the strings on a marionette. It doesn't matter.
But I am opposed to those flesh-colored tights that go over the outside of the skate. That's ugly. You don't wear socks on the outside of shoes!
Hmm. I thought you used the word "ass" because the Slate article did. Frankly, I think magazines online do that because they want to seem hip-- I'll never forget the ill-fated Alicia Silverstone TV show where she said "ass" once per segment. Eeuuw. Boring writing, with the occasional "ass" thrown in for shock value, equals early cancellation.
I say it for effect, never in conversation, even with other feminists.
I know you all wanted to know that about me.
I'm still taken aback every time I read the f-word in The New Yorker, which happens pretty regularly now.
Back to important matters: Does anyone else wish the skater's arms and legs matched better? I would think they'd make a point of it, but they usually have the dark flesh tights and the pale arms. One reason I think Sasha Cohen looked great is because her tights were also pale.
The only skating outfit I remember liking was a black and white dress Nancy Kerrigan wore ages ago. I couldn't describe it, I just remember thinking she looked incredibly elegant, comparitively. No weird zig-zags or sparkles.
Peter VE said...
....Speaking from the heterosexual male point of view, I much prefer the unitards to the skirts. The skirts seem designed 1) to make the women look like they have outsized butts more appropriate to a bad rap video; & 2) distract from the skating when they skate backwards, as the fabric flutters and ends up clinging to their back before flopping down at an inopportune moment. In general, why can't the overall level of costume design be a lot better? Most of the skaters look like they're next job will be as a pole dancer in Scores.
Yea I agree, cause us heterosexual males are concerned about costume design.
Oh please. That entire comment above is not heterosexual male normative.
Peter VE said...
"This would be the same Giacomo Puccini who wrote operas about a consumptive prostitute, a Japanese prostitute, a Gold Rush prostitute, a vengeful singer, and a bloodthirsty princess. Delicate anatomical features, indeed!"
Chuckle.....
Richard Dolan,
I thought Ann's "falling on her ass" refrain was hilarious, as well as "too much tootie" and somebody's crotch coming at you at 60 miles an hour -- is that why they call her "Slutskaya"! There's such reverence about figure skating, so much awkward and embarrassing stuff you're not supposed to notice. It's like not thinking about an elephant.
The point of blogging is that you can speak your thoughts. You can dump out the contents of a head. We all know what's in there -- we've got one too, after all -- but it's a kick to hear it. (Of course, no one dumps out everything that's in there, unless they're crazy -- but this is how Ann is pushing the edges of the form, and it's fun.
I so agree about the weirdness of the flesh-colored fabric extending down to cover the skates. Ugh! It looks like a deformity, a clubfoot or a hoof.
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