Kerrigan earns up to three hundred thousand dollars for a single performance. Nearly 75 percent of the viewers of televised skating are women. Like golf, tennis, and gymnastics, figure skating is an individual sport favored by white people from the upper classes. The skaters wear cosmetics, frozen smiles, and revealing dresses. Behind the scenes they lift weights and sweat like any serious athlete but figure skating seems more dance than sport, more grace than guts, more art than athleticism.
Figure skating allows women to compete like Champions while dressed like Cheerleaders.
In the final round, if the competitors are of equal merit, artistry weighs more heavily than technique. I probably wasn't smiling enough. Commentators frame skaters as small, young, and decorative creatures, not superwomen but fairy-tale figments of someone's imagination. But the princess turned pumpkin shortly after midnight, as soon as the ball was over and she stopped smiling and started speaking. She felt too old to cavort with cartoon characters.