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And so the Olympics are upon us ....

May God help us.

Since I have already gone on record with a Times Op-Ed article in April saying the games should be banned entirely because of their incontrovertible history of corruption and politicizing, I know I shouldn’t watch. But given my abiding interest in the bizarre spectacle that I call SportsWorld, I won’t be able to entirely ignore the endless soap operas.

(snip)

But most of all I will watch the enormously popular women’s gymnastics competition. The performances are incredible and fearless, but it isn’t the athleticism that draws me in. In fact I can’t think of any competition in the Olympics, or all of SportsWorld, more creepy and disturbing: these largely shapeless girls in their leotards and flaxen-waxen hair and bouncy-wouncy ponytails. “They look like girls from the neck up,” I was told by Joan Ryan, whose 1995 book, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes,” blew a sky-high lid off the sadomasochistic training regimens that young female gymnasts were being subjected to. She continued: “From the neck down they look like prepubescent boys.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09bissinger.html?pagewanted=1&ref=opinion