This situation has now become insanely complicated, so I’m just going to do a broad-strokes summary of how we got here. MyKayla Skinner was an Olympic gymnast who won a silver medal in Tokyo. She’s now retired and having babies, and she’s also a self-styled influencer type with a very glossy social media. Before the Paris Olympics – and after she watched the US Olympic trials – she decided to chime in on the current state of Team USA’s gymnastics squad. She said sh-t like “Besides Simone [Biles], I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be…A lot of girls don’t work as hard….The girls just don’t have the work ethic.” She also made some disgusting comments about why “the girls” don’t have a work ethic – she thinks it’s because the coaches can’t be mean and aggressive towards girls and women anymore, thanks to… safety measures put into place after Larry Nassar and all of the horrendous sh-t that went down at the Karolyi Ranch.
The thing is, Simone Biles has spent years, alongside Nassar’s hundreds of victims, trying to get accountability and huge changes from US Gymnastics. It’s worked too, and there have been huge changes and Simone deserves a lot of credit. After MyKayla’s bonkers YouTube video, she got a ton of backlash and she ended up deleting the video and she made an apology. Simone and some of the other gymnasts took a couple of minor swipes at her and then they headed to Paris, where Team USA won gold in the team competition. Afterwards, Simone posted a photo with the team and wrote “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions.” A pitch-perfect subtweet, she didn’t even mention MyKayla’s name or tag her.
Well, guess who’s in her feelings and begging Simone Biles to stop cyberbullying?? This is one of the most thin-skinned Karen things I’ve ever f–king seen in my life. While death threats and threats of harm are always unacceptable, in the immortal words of Katt Williams, you shouldn’t have been talking sh-t. Simone had every right to clapback on MyKayla. Simone had every right to go even further – what MyKayla said and suggested about the coaches needing to be more “aggressive” with little girls and young women was despicable. It went against everything that Simone and the Nassar survivors have been painstakingly removing from the sport. And to address Simone personally? GMAFB.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, MyKayla’s IG.