I don't know who won the Women's World Gymnastics Championship in Tokyo yet, but I saw enough to make a few observations:
1 - The American team had whites, Asians, one African-American, and one Hispanic girl. All the other teams were completely homogenous when it came to race. That made me feel pretty good.
2 - The girls demonstrated once more the difference between men's sports and women's sports: men strive to be the best athlete, and so do women—but in order to win, women have to do it beautifully. I've found this is true in nearly every walk of life, not only in sports, but in entertainment and in the business place.
I remember the epiphany I had at one symphony I've seen in my life, Beethoven's Ninth at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. We were in the third row and I loved the music, but what struck me was the difference in how the male and female musicians had dressed for the performance. The men, as talented as they were, obviously did not worry too much about their appearance. My eyes (trained by 20 years of undergoing and later conducting military inspections) saw the ones whose hair was unkempt, whose clothing was rumpled or out of place, and some who just didn't seem as if they had bathed beforehand.
The women, on the other hand, were perfect—their hair and their dresses. No detail had been overlooked. It was then that I realized that the women weren't being perfect in order to show off to the men or to attract the opposite sex. They had to be perfect, because every single woman in the audience was searching the female musicians with a critical eye for a flaw—any flaw. Now I can better understand why it is my Darling, when she watches news or reality shows, is able to comment so quickly on how this or that actress has changed, whether her hair is longer or shorter or a different shade, or if she's gaining or losing weight.
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