Photo by YantsImages via Wikimedia Commons
I can’t stop thinking about the jump. She nails it. It looks fun, and I’ve never in my life thought that ice skating looked fun. Elegant, sure. Complicated, yes. Scary, oh my. But fun?
Alysa Liu is a miracle that came too late for me, but for this generation of teens she’s skating by at exactly the right time.
When I was a child, we watched the Winter Olympics religiously. We had a really old, clunky television that had multiple buttons (!!!) and took up a good foot of depth space in the little rented living room of the 2br that my mom raised four of us girls in.
We’d pile on the blue couch to watch the great Kristi Yamaguchi, in awe at one of the very few Asian women we ever saw on TV. We didn’t have a lot of diversity in the suburbs near Albuquerque, but I remember thinking how pretty and remarkable she was.
Living in the Bay Area, I don’t think much about winter sports. Sure, the rich people have ski week, but I’m far more envious of surfers and people on sailboats enjoying the bay. I rarely thought about ice skating until I started working near a rink. Watching people practice, stretch, jump, and carry heavy bags to and from the arena made me remember how fun it was to watch an American whoop everyone else’s ass.
So when the Alysa Liu hype started, I was already on the train. Hell yeah, a kid from the Bay who practiced at our local ice rink was going to compete internationally! And then I saw her floor routine – the sad one. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something like that. She made it look easy, but she also made me cry.
When the competition finally happened and she won, people went feral. It felt like everyone claimed her all at once. But one thing stuck out. People kept talking about her unusual journey here, and specifically about her age.
When you reach your 30s, you realize how absolutely MADE UP all the shit is about women aging. So I laughed when I read about Alysa Liu taking a break and people doubting she could come back. A woman can do anything. And that’s exactly what Liu proved.
I watched her routine more than once, I gotta say. It’s so fun. I don’t really want to say it’s effortless, because I know it took her a ton of practice and work. But I will say, she makes it look effortless. And that takes more skill than I have in my pinky toe.
For women, aging sometimes means becoming invisible. For Alysa Liu, aging meant getting better, doing things on her terms, and ultimately showing everyone they’d better not make assumptions.
Everything about Alysa Liu’s journey makes me want to shout with joy. She’s still pretty much a kid in my book, but for teenagers she’s so much more. She’s an icon, someone who didn’t let a slump turn into a life sentence. And she’s doing it all with the kind of blase attitude that is only achieved by being Actually Quite Thoughtful.
There’s no way in hell Alysa Liu will read this, but I want her to know that what she’s done for millennial and Gen X women is probably just as impactful as what she is doing for the young girls who look up to her. She’s showing us what it means to fight at the same time as being truly, deeply, unconditionally and excellently carefree.
