With 30 Olympic and World Championship medals combined, Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in US history. Her success is the epitome of Black Girl Magic in sport.
Black Girl Magic is an actual skillset that grants Black women, girls, and femmes the ability to push against the boundaries of the dominant society while living within it (Jordan-Zachary and Harris 2017). Black Girl Magic is Simone Biles defying gravity, and landing skills (such as the Yurchenko) other gymnasts won’t even attempt.
This magic, however, is bound by the lived reality of Black girls in gymnastics in the US.
The first US Black gymnast qualified for the Olympics in 1980. However, Luci Collins didn’t have the opportunity to compete as those particular games were boycotted. Nevertheless, Collins’ making the team began a trajectory of starts and stoppages of US Black gymnasts on the national and Olympic stage.
In 1983 Dianne Durham, the first Black national gymnastics champion inducted into the USGA hall of fame, was the first Black gymnast in the US to win the senior national championships with her all-around title. In 1992 Betty Okino and Dominque Dawes made team USA, becoming two of the first Black women to compete for team US in the Olympic Games. Then in 1996, as part of the ‘Magnificent Seven,’ Dawes become the first to win an individual medal (Bronze) for her floor routine. Even today, Dominque Dawes remains a notable name within the context of USA Gymnastics
Black gymnasts in the US have competed at various levels for a number of years, yet the number of those who have made it to the Olympic stage is small.
Dawes competed for Team USA in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympic games, earning medals at every stage. It would take another twelve years before Team USA would have another Black gymnast make the Olympic team. That year, in 2012, Gabby Douglas made the team for the London Olympics.
Douglas started gymnastics early and in the mid-2000s she became a figure to watch.
As a part of the ‘Fierce Five’ Douglas brought home both team and all-around gold medals. Yet despite all of her success in the sport, her experiences were challenging. During the 2012 Olympic Games, Douglas received harsh backlash on social media about her hair, a sensitive issue for Black women in sport and society in general.
Nevertheless, Douglas met her criticism with grace.
“‘I just made history and people are focused on my hair? It can be bald or short; it doesn’t matter about (my) hair,'” she said to the AP.
Last year she posted an image of her hair and addressed the “hair controversy” that ridiculously overshadowed her Olympic performance.
“From a very young age I always had to put my hair in a tight ponytail to do gymnastics and due to that my hair became completely damaged. I had bald spots on the back of my head. I was so embarrassed and self-conscious that i put a bunch of clips over the spots to try and cover them up, but it was still noticeable. My hair grew a little, but shortly after, i had to cut all of my hair off because it was so damaged,” she wrote. “Now here I am today – no extensions – no clip-ins – no wigs – no chemicals – all me.”
At the 2016 Games in Rio, Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles exemplified Black Girl Magic.
Four years earlier, Biles was the first American woman gymnast to be chosen by Team USA to be a flag bearer during the closing ceremonies. Since then, she has been a dominant, seemingly unstoppable force. The presence and success of Black gymnasts at the Olympic level can no longer be ignored or debated.
It is firmly cemented in the sport’s history.
A Bright Future For Black Gymnasts
The bodies of Black women gymnasts were once stigmatized within the world of gymnastics—a sport that has undergone many transformations over time.
As with ballet and athletes such as Misty Copeland, Black women’s bodies have been thought of as less than in certain sports—particularly those said to require “grace.” It could be due in part to the stereotypes of Black women as aggressive, masculine, and angry that has contributed to such stigma in both gymnastics and ballet. Nevertheless, beyond these stereotypes it is difficult to ignore the ways that Black gymnasts at the national and Olympic level are making their presence felt.
Black gymnasts such as UCLA’s Nia Dennis are incorporating decidedly Black culture and music into their floor routines, garnering the attention of music artists from Missy Elliot to Janet Jackson. They unapologetically integrated Black Lives Matter into their routines and dared critics to retort.
Dennis’ floor routines became a sensation on social media, reaching over 10 million views the very first week The significance of Black culture as an influence within gymnastics in the US cannot be overstated. As we prepare for the upcoming Summer Games, decisions about who will represent women’s gymnastics are in full swing. Of the 18 hopefuls vying for one of the four coveted spots on the team, six are Black women.
For the first time in history, the possibility of an all-Black team representing USA gymnastics is within reach.
A photo with the six Black gymnasts has been making the rounds across social media, and has been captioned as “the first all-Black women’s gymnastics team”. The caption is misleading and not yet a reality, but the commentary around this possibility, as you could imagine, is illuminating.
Like it or not, race, class and gender are part and parcel of sport and society.
While it may seem innocuous to try to frame sport as meritocratic or beyond social issues, the truth is that these intersections are woven within the very fabric of American sport and society.
As it relates to gymnastics, it is important to reflect on the trajectory of Black gymnasts. Our contemporary climate of “anti-Blackness” cannot be divorced from surface measures of change. Sports offer us a window with which to exam society at large, and the ways that the face of US gymnastics is changing is one such window worthy of consideration and discussion.
And no matter what the final team looks like, Black Girl Magic will be front and center in the sport.
