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Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams Books
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Rating:  -
A memoir from a gymnast's point of view is long overdue in the oftentimes tedious litany of cautionary tales about high-level gymnastics. Written by an athlete, not a journalist, Jennifer Sey's Chalked Up finally fills this void. She painstakingly renders her unlikely rise to gymnastics superstardom and subsequent fall into depression and obscurity. Her story is brave, honest, and raw at times. Readers who are former gymnasts likely will have a strong emotional reaction (one way or the other) to this work; her straightforward prose becomes an open doorway to experiences, sounds, smells, and pains long forgotten. As a second unique and long overdue contribution, Sey offers us a gymnast's perspective, not during her career or immediately following, but twenty years later, as she still struggles to figure out how her former life as a gymnast meshes with her current identity as a professional woman, wife, and mother of two children.
As a former elite gymnast who is now a sociologist, I am intrigued by the fervent debates this book has sparked in the gymnastics community. It is unclear how much of Sey's overall discontent with her memories of elite gymnastics can be generalized to other contexts- to other individuals' experiences, to elite gymnastics today (a lot has changed since the 1980s, as Sey herself points out), and to other varieties of elite sport or child accomplishment. What is clear is that, whether or not you agree with her rendition of what happened, Sey is definitely not over it. Her work raises important questions about the longer term effects of elite sport on self and identity, and about how the costs (and benefits) of an intensely athletic childhood play out over the life course.
Rating:  -
I feel sorry for the girl who went through many of the things described in this book. I have no pity for the grown woman who seems intent upon skewering every person in her past who did not give her what she thinks she was owed.
I think there are objective problems with the sport of gymnastics. The point is well taken that little girls should not be submitted to a scoring system that is based upon deductions and counting "imperfections." Clearly, grown men whose careers involve close contact with little girls in leotards ought to be screened carefully.
However, Jennifer Sey is relentlessly petty and seemingly out to get each person who, in her opinion, never valued her at her true worth. The overall impression is that the author is not as intelligent and penetrating about people and their motivations as she thinks she is. She takes great pains to point out the (supposed) hypocrisy and cowardice of others, with some feeble attempts here and there to point out her own shortcomings, as if that will make her viewpoint fair.
For example, she serves her father up on a silver platter on numerous occassions, detailing his failings for the whole world to read. It comes across as incredibly smug, as if she's telling him, "You weren't as perfect as you thought you were." Or, perhaps even, present tense, "You aren't as perfect as you think you are." She is also brutal in her depiction of her mother. These things would not be surprising if she maintained that they were monsters and horrible parents. But that is not the case. She mentions the many generous and loving things they did for her. Sadly, she seems to point out their virtues only in order to paint them as hyprocrites, instead of in order to show them as complex human beings, with good and bad points taken together.
She also implies that Angie, her fiercest competitor at one gym, was too cowardly to come back and compete after an injury, because she was afraid Jennifer would beat her. It's as if Angie owed it to Jennifer to let Jennifer beat her. Nevermind that at the time, Angie was not at her prime. As I see it, when both were at their prime, Angie beat Jennifer, fair enough, case closed. For a grown woman to go back and spell out ever implication for *why* Angie didn't return to compete--and, in Jennifer's view, why she didn't come back specifically to compete against Jennifer--is silly and vain. This little girl, Angie, probably had a host of reasons not to participate in a specific competition, and they likely did not revolve around *Jennifer.*
Jennifer is particularly spiteful about former U.S. Champion Kristie Phillips, the 1987 winner. Jennifer notes that Kristie attempted a "comeback" ten years after she left the sport, in 1999. Jennifer gloatingly points out that Kristie only managed to place 23rd in the all-around, and she calls Kristie's attempt a "pitiable circumstance." I think most of us would agree that a gymnast who managed to place 23rd, after 10 years out of the sport, is someone to be admired. Whether or not Kristie returned because she couldn't let go of the past(as Jennifer scornfully maintains), Kristie nonetheless accomplished something very difficult and praiseworthy. It's as if Kristie could only win Jennifer's respect by placing *1st* which is precisely the attitude Jennifer claims does so much damage to gymnasts, i.e., if you aren't 1st, you are nothing.
Also, Jennifer (the author) seems to hoard each and every slight she ever received, recounting them all for us to read, seemingly so that we will "understand" how she came to be who she is.
In the foreward, the author pretty much says she was a neurotic child, and if gymnastics hadn't found her, she would have obsessed about being "the best" at something else. What's clear by the end of the book is that she has lived a linear life, no less entitled and petulant and neurotic now than as a little girl.
It could have been a fascinating book. It could have been a, "this is the little girl I was, these were the circumstances that shaped me, this is how I see things now." Instead, it is a glimpse into the mind of someone who never sees herself, or the people in her life, as good enough. They never, herself included, give her what she needs and wants.
By Jennifer's own account, she was never the most atheletic, charming, talented, or spectacular gymnast. She had to work hard and bulldoze her way through to the top. Given that, the fact that she won the U.S. Nationals is amazing. Her achievements are remarkable and a tribute to her gymnastics. She accomplished a lot, considering her raw talent for the sport was not terribly high. A well-rounded, grown woman with perspective would look back at that and say, "Wow. I really did great." Or, if all the suffering she describes is true, "Wow. I had a tragic life, yet look what I accomplished despite all that suffering." But this woman has not. She is consumed with what could have been, with what, in some alternate universe, should have been. And it comes across as a bitter life.
Rating: -
Thanks Jennifer for your honest account of your personal story. As a mom with three kids and a family chock full of former elite athletes, I struggle daily with the notion of how much pressure and competitiveness we subject children to. The culture of "positive pushing" is pervasive and your story shows how things can go sideways with even the best of intentions.
Rating: -
At the age of nineteen, Jennifer Sey was the number one gymnast in the United States. She had 3% body fat, had never had her period, and trained for eight hours a day. Her family had relocated to bring her closer to the best trainers, her coaches were relentless, and just one year before she had broken her leg. This is an amazing and powerful memoir about the desire to be the best, the sacrifices that go into it, but also the abuses and dangers of giving up everything in the pursuit of a young girl's sport.
Rating: -
An incredible and honest account of a young woman's experience. As a lifelong fan of the sport, I never imagined gymnastics to be so incredibly brutal, both physically and mentally. Having read the book shortly before the Olympic games, I found myself glued to each qualification round, looking to spot the most minor wince, limp or disappointed expression wondering what each athlete endured to get to such an elite level. The book was thought-provoking -- the sport of watching gymnastics may never be the same for me again.
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