WRUNG OUT IN RIO
U.S. gymnast is making the most of the pain of online bullying
When Gabby Douglas logged onto the Internet after winning her second consecutive Olympic gold medal in the all-around team finals this summer, she was hoping to see articles and tweets talking about her stunning performance on the uneven bars.
After sticking a double layout landing and earning the third-highest score of the event with 15.766 points, the 20-year-old found a steady stream of hate from online bullies questioning her patriotism after she stood at attention, but didn’t place her hand over her heart when the national anthem played during the medal ceremony.
“I was like, ‘What? This can’t be a thing,’” Douglas recalled.
Things got even worse for Douglas later in the Rio Games when she was called out online for what some saw as a lack of support for teammates Aly Raisman and Simone Biles, who were competing in the individual all-around competition.
Douglas, who narrowly missed out on a spot to compete in the event, attended the event in the stands, but some found her expressions too sour for the occasion. Tweets labelled her Crabby Gabby on Twitter and declared she was either too arrogant or too jealous to support her teammates. It was enough to draw tears from the native of Virginia Beach, Va., who later apologized for how those people interpreted her behaviour.
“I support (my teammates),” she told reporters in August, “and I’m sorry that I wasn’t showing it.”
Douglas is done apologizing now, however. As the three-time Olympic gold medallist heads into 2017, she’s dried her tears and held her head up high, declaring that she’s “overcome it.”
Online harassment “could be about anybody,” she said.
This is one reason she recently teamed up with Hack Harassment, a group that seeks to reduce online bullying. Douglas will tour high schools and college campuses for the organization next year.
The two-time Olympian said she has “no idea” to this day why she became such a lightning rod for criticism. In 2012, when Douglas was just 16, strangers online got on her about her hair, which they thought looked unkempt.
Douglas doesn’t chalk up the criticism to her gender or her race, however. Instead, she simply blamed “the mean few that feel like they need to comment on everything.”
According to the Pew Research Center, about 70 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 have been bullied online.
While Douglas bore the brunt during this year’s Olympics, some of her teammates, including Biles, 19; Raisman, 22; and Madison Kocian, 19, also found themselves on the receiving end of online hate when they posted a picture to Instagram of themselves in bikinis on a Rio beach after the Games. It wasn’t their expressions, hair or patriotism that some took issue with, but their muscular physiques.
“Everybody’s on social media in my generation and everybody’s using it,” Douglas said. “I think that’s why a lot of teens, more than adults, are dealing with these problems.”
Douglas said she stayed off-line before the Olympics to concentrate on her training, and wasn’t ready to deal with the onslaught of criticism she received when she finally logged back on.
She said when she first saw what people were saying, she thought it “was gonna blow away” quickly. It’s when it didn’t, however, that it really began to affect her.
“When they talk about my hair or me not putting my hand up on my heart or me being very salty in the stands, they’re really criticizing me and it doesn’t really feel good,” Douglas tearfully told reporters in Rio in August. “It was a little bit hurtful.”
Douglas can still recall the hurt she felt, although it no longer elicits tears.
“We already feel a lot of pressure being out on the competition floor … and when someone has to deal with that, you know, it’s a lot,” she said. “It was a lot for me …
“I thought people were taking such small things and making them a bigger deal than they were, and I had accomplished something so great. You know, going back to the Olympics, winning another team medal, qualifying for the bar finals — I was like, wait, why can’t they focus on the good instead of the negative?”
Douglas doesn’t claim to know the answers, but she knows it’s not because of anything she did or didn’t do, and she’s hoping to instil that sense of self-worth into young people while touring schools for Hack Harassment.
“I feel like when you really stand up for yourself and you really tell people, ‘Hey, you know, that’s not right’ … they back off,” she said. “You gotta face the situation without fear.”