You Play the Girl

the transformative power of feeling good

It is my imagination or is everyone especially obsessed with this Olympics?

My theory is that between Kamala and the Olympic Games we have all been reminded what it feels like to feel good. When the Kamala news happened my initial reaction was, isn’t it great to not feel total despair. But now I think it’s more than that. Feeling good feels great. I love feeling great. I am willing to go to great lengths to continue to feel great.

Watching the Olympics has been equally delightful. It feels so great, in fact, that every time I hear a sportscaster point out flaws in a gymnastics routine that seems to defy all laws of nature and the human body, I want to say, I get that this is your job, but maybe just for now can we all just be in awe that this is possible. I don’t actually care if this person’s knee broke form by one inch.

I’ve had the same reaction to the immediate parsing of when Kamala’s so-called “honeymoon” period will end. Not that her campaign doesn’t require interrogating, but the desire to find the negative so immediately feels tiresome. What about, instead, we get more on why is it working so well? Where will all this feeling good energy lead? I’ve talked a bit about joy and beauty being transformative as rage in connection with the book, and I think that applies here. What if this isn’t a honeymoon period. What if people are just motivated right now by feeling good. What if this is a person who has met her moment and now we can all meet ours.

I haven’t followed the Olympics closely in years. I imagine this has something to do with not having had a TV for years. This year, however, I’m glued to NBC’s Olympic Instagram. Whoever is running it deserves their own medal. They have nailed the social media landing so perfectly, as it were. Related: I have not been able to get this song out of my head for days, thanks to this delightful reel.

Suni Lee! Can you even imagine being capable of this? Via @nbcolympics

The last time I was this engrossed was during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. I was nine, had never seen the Olympics before, and parked myself in front of the television for two weeks straight. There were only, what, 15 channels then? It was all that was on. Flipping back and forth between the Canadian and American coverage gave me an early lesson in media literacy: the American channels were like an incredible blockbuster movie featuring only Americans no matter where they placed. The Canadian channel was like a documentary where you found out what was actually happening.

Canada did particularly well in those games, which was a revelation; you rarely saw Canadians on American TV in those days. The swim team especially killed it; Alex Baumann, Victor Davis (RIP), Anne Ottenbrite. I’d been in swimming lessons my whole life, and after watching Alex Baumann win two gold medals, I told my parents I wanted to be a competitive swimmer. It was a defining decision in my life. The next seven years were spent in the pool, in competition. I obviously never made it to the Olympics, but I made it to the national level and so much of the discipline freelance writing takes is a result of all the discipline it took to show up to practice eight times a week.

It’s left me thinking a lot about who gets inspired by what. Watching Alex Baumann changed by life. I saw myself in his achievement. Multiple times I’ve heard sportscaster’s note that Simone Biles is inspiring a generation of young black girls to become gymnasts. Which, YES! Amazing. And also, I want to say, she’s probably inspiring a lot of other people, including boys. Because greatness is inspiring. I’d like to see that noted or shown, too.

I was listening to Ezra Klein the other day, as I do. He was interviewing Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota (he of the “weird” labeling that has stuck). At one point Klein noted that one of the appeals of Trump and Vance is that they offer a vision of masculinity that’s appealing because many young men feel “there’s no role for men anymore.” And all I could think is, instead of finding ways to shoehorn old ideas of masculinity, which a glance have not served Planet Earth all that well, what if people started focusing on new and better story-telling celebrating roles for men that actually do serve all of us. White dudes for Harris, feels like one small step in this direction. As does Jason Kelce showing up for the women’s rugby game wearing a shirt with Ilona Maher’s face on it. Also, ILONA MAHER. Related, it’s been fun seeing this Fleabag clip, reemerge and be passed around by men.

Good Decisions

Two podcasts I recorded a while back aired this week. I was on Allana Harkin’s delightful new podcast How Dare She (past guests include Samantha Bee, and JEANNE BEKER). The podcast was recorded at a live event we did in Toronto at Flying Books in June and it was so much fun.

I was also on Sophia Bush’s podcast Work in Progress. We recorded this the week before the book came out and it was a really smart, enjoyable conversation. Sophia’s team was the first to reach out to me way back in February when the book cover was first released and it was the first hint I had that people might enjoy this strange-seeming book I’d written.

It was James' Baldwin’s 100th Birthday this week. I consider the day I was assigned his short story Sonny’s Blues to be a life-changing one for me as a reader.