British gymnast Louis Smith gave a sterling demonstration this week of how not to treat women, and how not to respond when people call you out for your treatment of women.
Smith has won some medals at the Olympics, but that’s not actually relevant to this story. Olympian or no, he’s still a creep. A creep who posted, on Snapchat, a photo of American gymnast Carly Patterson -- a close-up of her butt -- with the caption, “my sport has its moments.”
As if that weren't bad enough, the photo was taken when Patterson, now 28, was only 16.
The photo is from the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, where Patterson became only the second American woman ever to win All-Around Gold at the Olympics.
When people objected to the objectification of a minor -- a minor who was, and still is, a much more accomplished athlete than Smith is, by the way -- he deleted the photo. When people continued to raise objections, Smith insisted that he’d only apologize if Patterson herself said she was offended.
Uh, Louis, I don’t think people were objecting to the idea that gymnastics gets you in great shape. They were objecting to the fact that you zoomed in on a photo of a teenage girl’s butt and ogled it, then encouraged thousands of people to do the same.
Women -- and girls -- do not do gymnastics for men's sexual amusement. They do it because it's the closest a human can get to being a superhero. It's bad enough that a female gymnast can get a deduction for pulling her leotard out of her butt should it creep up there in the middle of a routine. Now, female gymnasts have to deal with their male peers turning them into sex objects for their followers' consumption, too?
But Smith wasn’t done. After people continued to object to his response, he tweeted at Patterson, marveling at what a big day it had been, and joking they should do it again, or something.
Patterson then apologized to him, seemingly for how much heat he was taking, and reassured her followers that they’re friends.
That’s right: She apologized to him. He objectified her, then laughed off the criticism, arguing that it only counted as sexism -- and thus worth apologizing for -- if she was upset by it. Then, he publicly pressured her to be cool about it so that he wouldn’t have to apologize. And ended up getting an apology himself. From the woman whose teenage butt he’d been publicly, creepily ogling.
It was a perfectly stuck dismount. An international judging panel of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Woody Allen and Bill Cosby would give this routine an Olympic gold medal. It would be Smith’s first.
Related
Before You Go
