Gymnastics is defined by exercises that require a lot of physical coordination, flexibility, and strength! For women’s gymnastics, the players/communicators are typically young women (usually under the age of 35-40). The audience usually consists of spectators who are watching a performance for their own pleasure (as seen at the Olympics or gymnastics competitions). Gymnastics usually speaks to athletes, gymnasts themselves, and people who enjoy watching the sport! The sport is also more popular among women and girls. In terms of the gymnasts, there are definitely a higher proportion of female gymnasts over male gymnasts. Gymnastics doesn’t have traditional rules like a sports game would have. Instead, gymnasts are scored based on the accuracy, precision, and difficulty of their floor routines. The ultimate performance is determined by the gymnast’s ability to execute their routine with the highest quality and precision! Since gymnastics is such a female-dominated field, I feel like the grounds upon what determines a good gymnastics performance also conform to the patriarchal concept of a “good woman”. The gymnasts are supposed to conform to their routine and execute a delicate and perfect routine that doesn’t differ from the planned choreography. In my opinion, female gymnastics routines also have a very feminine aspect to the choreography. They also include delicate and feminine dance steps which really show the overlap between playing sports and playing gender in gymnastics. In the video that I included, you can see the careful and delicate dance steps that Simone Biles takes in her routine! In my opinion, gymnastics is not very wild because it stays to a carefully planned routine and doesn’t involve a lot of unplanned events or improvision. The routine does not include any sudden or violent movements and instead focuses on precision, agility, and planned movements.
I was thinking of writing about gymnastics as well because of the incredible skill and strength that it takes! Some people don’t even recognize it as a sport, but it truly takes the most skilled and powerful athletes. I like how you spoke on gender, considering it is a more woman-dense sport. Also, you were right about how it truly is sticking to a script and it takes your own individual movements and technique to win, rather than a team sport which can get hectic like football or basketball, which requires a whole team to win.
Gymnastics has a very interesting sport in terms of gender dynamics, and I love your analysis of that. I agree that gymnastics presents itself as a very feminine sport, but takes many elements of traditionally “masculine” traits of strength, endurance, etc. It would be interesting to look closer into how gender dynamics play into being a male gymnast too!
Gymnstics is a great example of a wild sport! I always disagree with people when they say cheer/gymnastics/dance isn’t a sport because they don’t know all the hard work that actually gets put into the sport. I believe gymnastics is a really dangerous/wild sport because the girls are flipping so fast in the air and any fall has the potential to result in the worst injuries. I like how you said “male aspects” are involved in the sport such as strength and endurance but still make it feminine through the dancing and moves. This was a great example!