2020: Interview with Russian ice skater about beauty standards and hormonal treatment given to adolescent girls

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

EXTRACT

Headline: I took hormone blockers to become an-ice-skating champion

I started ice skating when I was four. Initially, I was just tagging along with my sister, but soon enough the sport became my entire life. In 2004, when I was 10, I won the Moscow Championships and I was a candidate to become a “master of sport” – a Russian title for international champions who have made valuable contributions to sport. I was told that I had what it took to become a professional and even take part in the Olympics. I didn’t go to school, because I had to train for up to six hours a day. All of my friends were ice skaters; it was the only thing I knew.

When I was 12, puberty kicked in. I started menstruating and my body changed rapidly. Even though I was just an average teenager, I knew right away that there would be a chance my body would prevent me from being the best skater I could be. With a bigger body, I would no longer be able to do some of the complicated jumps that are necessary for competitions. Besides, in ice skating, a slim, childish body is the beauty standard. A curvy body is not.

Training was tough: I had to follow a strict diet. For every kilo I gained, I had to run extra kilometres on top of my usual 15km. My body was being pushed to extremes. I ruined my knees trying to lose weight, but my body never went back to its prepubescent state, despite all the effort.

At this point, I was advised to take medication that would block the production of hormones: I would stop menstruating, my breasts would stop growing – and I would keep my young, slim body. I never questioned it. In Russia, it is widely known that young ice skaters use hormone blockers to keep their bodies from changing. In most cases, taking the hormone blockers works – although there are always side-effects, such as problems with your nervous system and your heart, that no one really talks about.

I don’t think that the professional ice skating judges are explicitly sexist for not liking a voluptuous female body: the weight of your breasts really does affect your jumps. But many young girls are pushed to a point at which they have to quit the sport entirely; they literally break their bodies. All the older professional skaters have metal screws and plates in their bodies, because they have been ruined by competing. My sister is 25 years old and has fake knees.In my case, the drugs backfired – they had the opposite effect to the one intended. I took them for only three months, but my breasts grew rapidly and I gained 36kg (5st 9lb) in six months. I never got back to my normal body. There was no longer any chance of me competing at the highest level, so I quit ice skating altogether.continues hereI'm surprised the Guardian published it, but they did.

I'm surprised the Guardian published it, but they did.

I think it’s because they’re stupid. As an organisation. There’s a clear editorial narrative to avoid any of the news about puberty blockers for gender reasons wherever possible. So this article will have been put across the desk of the editor of the Lifestyle section who either wasn’t at the meeting, or doesn’t see any similarities between the two scenarios, even though the damage done is exactly the same.

There are lessons to be learned from the hormonal abuse of Eastern European girls and the long term impacts it brings and will bring to gender confused children. I’d like to think this is subtle GC sneak onto the front page, but I just think they’re too stupid to see the obvious cross reference.

How depressing. Those poor girls.

That is heartbreaking. Good for the author for using her experience to create something of value to young people. Competitive sport has a lot to answer for.

While I think that the Russian and Russian influenced countries are possibly the most blatant at this kind of doping, I don't think it means that Western countries aren't also doing similar things to their young athletes. Something that just really sticks with me about the Larry Nasser sexual abuse case in American Gymnastics, is that many of the gymnasts said that part of the reason Nasser got away with it for so long is that he was the one adult in the team staff who was nice to them. He was sexual abusing these girls and their sexual abuse was in many ways 'nicer' than their treatment by their coaches. What fucking insane level of fucked up is that?

I do gymnastics as an older adult and I'm good at it. But whenever I catch myself wishing I'd been able to learn as a child as I would have stood a really good chance of competing at a high level and/or having a career in a related field. I end up mostly relieved that instead I'm middle-aged with a strong, healthy body, with real potential to be elderly with a strong, healthy body. Two things that are rare for women who trained to high level when young.

The funny thing is, I'm in a lot of online groups for adults in these types of sports and it's taken as a given that Lupron fucks up the future health of the girls in gymnastics, figure skating, etc. Absolutely everyone who comments knows the toll puberty blockers can take on their body and long term bone density, fertility, etc. But yet, a lot of the same people literally have 'protect trans kids' in their bios/on their avatars. They do not seem to make the connection between the puberty blockers that they know are terrible for the long term health of athletes and the same puberty blockers that are given to children who say they are the opposite sex.

Oh, those poor girls.

Wanderingowl

I also think the scale of the abuse of child athletes is unknown. I think it's far more extensive than publicly known. There's this book I once read, which keeps coming to mind whenever Larry Nassar comes up in conversation, called The Women's Decameron by Julia Voznesenskaya.
The premise was ten women shut in a maternity ward each tell ten stories about their lives to the other women in the ward. The author was obviously drawing on real life events.

The blurb goes like this: Like Boccacio's famous Florentines, Julia Voznesenskaya's Russian women are cunning and savvy—about all facets of the Soviet system. They know how to beat it and how to endure. Quarantined in a Leningrad maternity ward after giving birth, ten women from all walks of Soviet life amuse themselves by telling stories—stories that provide an astonishingly intimate and dramatic insight into the lives of Russia today.
The women recount one hundred stories—one story told each day by each of the ten women for ten days—on such themes as love, jealousy, infidelity, seduction, farcical sex, money, revenge, and finally, happiness. Beneath their gossip runs the stark reality of a society torn apart by suicide, divorce, and alcoholism; by the difficulties of finding food and a place to live; by the threat of harrowing imprisonment. Voznesenskaya writes vividly about everyday Soviet life as well as politics, and her revealing book conveys a passionate belief in the spiritual strength of the Russian woman, to which readers everywhere will respond with sympathy and shocks of recognition.

One of the characters in the ward was a retired ice skater, and one of her stories was about being sexually abused by her ice-skating coaches under the pretext of muscle stretching. At first she didn't know what was happening at all, and then one of the older girls explained what was happening- the men were abusing the whole squad of girls and calling it physiotherapy.

Where did Julia Voznesenskaya get that idea for a story from? I find it very difficult not to conclude that she knew a woman who'd experienced something like it firsthand. How widespread has this abuse been?

Absolutely Purgatory. I definitely think it's a huge problem in the artistic sports like figure skating and gymnastics. And other physical arts like ballet. But I suspect it's absolutely widespread throughout many types of sports. Anything where children really want something, are competing for places and being pushed by their parents leaves them vulnerable to predators. It's why it's so widespread among child stars in the entertainment industry. Sports is almost certainly the same.

More about abuse in Russian ice-skating.

The decision to allow 15-year-old gold medal favorite Kamila Valieva to skate despite a positive drug test has become the biggest story of the Winter Games. But the bigger story of Russia’s skating success and how it came about began much earlier.

Women’s figure skating, for the past eight years, has been dominated by pre-pubescent Russian girls. They all train with the same coach, Eteri Tutberidze, at a storied rink in Moscow called Sambo-70. After the meteoric rise of Yulia Lipnitskaya—the little girl in red at the 2014 Olympics—and Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva’s rivalry at the 2018 Games, there came figure skating’s quad revolution. These “Eteri girls” could land countless quadruple jumps and win all the medals awarded, at every single competition. Other athletes, those who couldn’t land quads, seemed like they just weren’t trying hard enough.

Tutberidze has come to be regarded as the world’s leading expert in creating figure skating champions. Her methods are no secret. The Eteri girls talk openly about not being able to drink water during competitions. They do their best to delay puberty by eating only “powdered nutrients” or by taking Lupron, a puberty blocker known to induce menopause. They are subjected to daily public weigh-ins and verbal and physical abuse. And they compete while injured, huffing “smelling salts” while wearing knee braces and collapsing in pain after programs.

Every year, a new, younger Eteri girl emerges on the scene while others retire, at age 17, 16, or even 14. Skating fans call this the “Eteri Expiration Date.” In Sochi, Lipnitskaya was 15 years old, as was Zagitova in Pyeongchang, as is Kamila Valieva right now, in Beijing.

This is not normal. Michelle Kwan won five World Championship medals before retiring in her mid-20s. Katarina Witt retired at age 29. Carolina Kostner, Sochi bronze medalist, competed in the Olympics at age 31. But in the age of the quad revolution, such longevity is unthinkable. In 2019, less than two years after winning Olympic gold, Zagitova explained that, at 17, quads had become too dangerous for her. “I will need to prepare for them physically and mentally. I will also need to lose some weight, something like 3 kilograms, to decrease the risk of injuries,” she said before retiring less than a month later.

Continues at Slate