“This is great courage on her part. I know a lot of skaters who have something to say about this, but they can’t, not yet.” Anastasiia Skoptsova commented on the story shared by Kaitlin Hawayek
Anastasiia Skoptsova, former ice dancer commented on the story shared by Kaitlin Hawayek.
source: sports.ru dd. 28th October by Maiia Bagriantseva
Kaitlin Hawayek shared that at the end of the competitions at Skate America, one of the spectators said that she needed to “lose a lot of weight.”
Many skaters spoke in support of Kaitlin, Russian skaters reacted also. Annabelle Morozov liked her post, Elizaveta Khudaiberdieva reposted and added: “No one knows what athletes go through. You can’t know for sure if this topic is painful for a skater.”
Anastasia Skoptsova, who knows firsthand how hard it is to deal with fat shaming, also posted: “Thank you for sharing this. I’m so proud of you.”
Skoptsova admitted that she perfectly understands Kaitlin’s feelings.
Anastasia Skoptsova: This is great courage on her part. We know that in figure skating it is not customary to talk about this, especially for active athletes. I know a lot of skaters who have something to say about this, but they can’t, not yet.
Athletes do not like pity, they are afraid to appear weak. And you need a lot of inner strength to tell about it, as Kaitlin did. I myself faced this only on the Internet – all the heroes are there, there is always more courage to write something from anonymous accounts. But, fortunately, I’ve never been told that personally. I don’t even know how I would react if a stranger approached me and said that I needed to lose weight, not knowing anything about me and my health.
We can’t do anything about the fact that our sport is about aesthetics. And it would be cunning to say that you can skate with any weight and any shape. If appearance hadn’t been important, we could have skated in black training clothes and no makeup.
But I had such a problem. For many years I could not lose weight due to health problems, with the endocrine system. This is generally a very common problem, not only skaters face it. And I would like to appeal to the fans: every word of yours carries a lot of weight for athletes, and the consequences can be just huge. Be kinder. Our attitude towards ourselves depends on this.
I’ll be honest, every athlete, even if he says that he doesn’t read the comments, most likely still sees what they write about him. And when you read that you are a “bag of potatoes” or “broke your partner’s back” – seems you don’t want to react to it, but in the end you still focus on it, stop eating – and this only makes everything worse. And it turns out that you are in a vicious circle and it is impossible to get out of it. And the trigger could be someone’s careless word.
If you really love this sport, don’t destroy it.
There are many good athletes who retire due to weight related reasons. It seems to the fans that they will tell us something out of good intentions – yeah, but I didn’t notice before that I had to lose 2 kg, as if I don’t see it in the mirror. It’s not support, it’s more like a prickle. Although the fans think they are helping us.
Here he was watching the Russian Nationals or Skate America and he was the only one who noticed that someone was overweight. Well, all of a sudden, no one had told Kaitlin about this before him, but now he will. It’s not very tactful and not humane.
Related topics: Anastasia Skoptcova Kirill Aleshin, Kaitlin Hawayek Jean-Luc Baker
Very strong and sensitive statement by Skoptcova. Fans need to respect boundaries and keep their unwanted advice to fan boards.