. On an upcoming episode of The Waves, Slate’s podcast on gender and feminism, Amira Rose Davis and Rebecca Schuman discuss this year’s Olympic games, and whether they’re as good for women as the organizers have advertised. A portion of that conversation has been excerpted early, and edited for length and clarity, below. Listen to the
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Amira Rose Davis: In the women’s gymnastics final, we saw Simone Biles really shockingly pull out, and there’s this conversation already happening that was about mental toughness and what you push through. And it’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” We are so conditioned within sports to say, push yourself to a breaking point mentally and physically in the name of gold, in the name of competition, in the name of this, and I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or what, or maturity, I don’t know, but it’s harder to watch. It’s harder to participate in, even as a fan. And yet it’s the Olympics, it’s seductive and it draws even the anti-sports person in.