“She’s Twice Their Age”: Representations of Aging and the Creation of an Age Order in Women’s Gymnastics

Abstract

Elite-level women’s artistic gymnastics is (in)famous for the youth of its competitors. Yet if age representation constructs the limits and possibilities of sport, it is important to explore the effects of these representations. Here we examine media coverage of gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who has competed internationally up to the age of 46. We conduct content analysis of 17 international competitions in which Chusovitina competed, from 2001 to 2018, exploring coverage of her and the younger gymnasts with whom she competed. As hegemonic masculinity structures a gender order in sport and beyond, we argue that gymnastics coverage constructs an age order in the sport by (1) emphasizing the exceptionality of older competitors; (2) focusing on athletes’ private lives; and (3) constructing the athlete-coach relationship as familial, where coaches are represented as surrogate parents. These techniques diminish the agency of young gymnasts and produce their youthfulness as hegemonic, treating athletes competing beyond their twenties as unworthy of serious attention. When older athletes like Chusovitina are categorized as outliers, the sports media is free to infantilize younger gymnasts, naturalizing their ostensible lack of agency, as well as the sport’s high burn-out and injury rate.