I mean, a big component of professional ballet involves the use of beta blockers to prevent girls from showing the signs of puberty.
Some of that is on athletic grounds - maturity brings changes to the body that impede the performance of the ballerina. Some of it is purely aesthetics. In fact, until fairly recently, women professional Olympians would avoid puberty to maintain the lean look that judges preferred. Only in the mid-90s/early-00s did we begin to see the power figure skaters and gymnasts who took advantage of the increased mature muscle mass to outperform their younger peers. Someone like Simone Biles would never have moved passed the preliminaries in an 80s-era Olympic competition.
But you could play the same game with male athletes and steroids/HGH/etc. Practically every professional uses some kind of performance enhancing medication of nebulous legality. And the younger you start, the greater the benefits over your career.
I gotta ask, if we’re so worried about this, do we need to get rid of professional athletics entirely? Or are we going to accept some degree of young body modification and parental control over their bodies?
Generally all peak athletes started very young, probably because of the parent’s dreams and not the child’s. I would have a problem with a lot of those situations.
Yeah, my daughter had expressed interest in doing competition dance. She just had a recital this past weekend, after which she was like, you know, I don’t want to give up my weekends and all my time to competition stuff. I’ll still dance, for fun, but I don’t need the competition. I said hell yeah, because I also don’t wanna do it. I’m glad she doesn’t feel pressured to be ultra competitive, and can still get enjoyment from an activity.
And then let’s not forget beauty pageants and professional kids sports in general. All of it in my eyes is extremely unethical. Kids should be doing their own growing up and their own clubs focused on meaningful growth not entertainment.
This is actually one of real problems of capitalism that no one is talking about. Since early investments are incredibly valuable in capitalistic societies kids with early entertainment training have advantage but using kids for entertainments is in practice simply unethical. This is equivalent of sexualizing kids early so they become sexy adults. Nasty stuff when you spend a minute actually thinking about.
Add in the fact that by tying athletics to universities many children are pressured into at the very least dedicating enough to compete on a university level in order to get scholarships.
Hell, in some cases that’s one of the concerns people have with trans athletes, and while I do have that concern in the atypical direction (there’s a large category of scholarships young trans people are increasingly being barred from, and some young trans people are being given a particularly harsh manifestation of the financial disadvantages associated with transition), but there’s also intense ablism and a strong absurdity to all of it.
The fact that its just normal in America that some teenagers will lose a scholarship because they get injured and that that will have a drastic change to their long-term finances is both on brand and fucking insane.
actually i’ve heard from a ton of people that youth ballet training is apparently problematic to them
but not because of the medical complications that certainly do arise with it. instead, because of supposed youth sexualization.
I mean, a big component of professional ballet involves the use of beta blockers to prevent girls from showing the signs of puberty.
Some of that is on athletic grounds - maturity brings changes to the body that impede the performance of the ballerina. Some of it is purely aesthetics. In fact, until fairly recently, women professional Olympians would avoid puberty to maintain the lean look that judges preferred. Only in the mid-90s/early-00s did we begin to see the power figure skaters and gymnasts who took advantage of the increased mature muscle mass to outperform their younger peers. Someone like Simone Biles would never have moved passed the preliminaries in an 80s-era Olympic competition.
But you could play the same game with male athletes and steroids/HGH/etc. Practically every professional uses some kind of performance enhancing medication of nebulous legality. And the younger you start, the greater the benefits over your career.
I gotta ask, if we’re so worried about this, do we need to get rid of professional athletics entirely? Or are we going to accept some degree of young body modification and parental control over their bodies?
Generally all peak athletes started very young, probably because of the parent’s dreams and not the child’s. I would have a problem with a lot of those situations.
Yeah, my daughter had expressed interest in doing competition dance. She just had a recital this past weekend, after which she was like, you know, I don’t want to give up my weekends and all my time to competition stuff. I’ll still dance, for fun, but I don’t need the competition. I said hell yeah, because I also don’t wanna do it. I’m glad she doesn’t feel pressured to be ultra competitive, and can still get enjoyment from an activity.
And then let’s not forget beauty pageants and professional kids sports in general. All of it in my eyes is extremely unethical. Kids should be doing their own growing up and their own clubs focused on meaningful growth not entertainment.
This is actually one of real problems of capitalism that no one is talking about. Since early investments are incredibly valuable in capitalistic societies kids with early entertainment training have advantage but using kids for entertainments is in practice simply unethical. This is equivalent of sexualizing kids early so they become sexy adults. Nasty stuff when you spend a minute actually thinking about.
Add in the fact that by tying athletics to universities many children are pressured into at the very least dedicating enough to compete on a university level in order to get scholarships.
Hell, in some cases that’s one of the concerns people have with trans athletes, and while I do have that concern in the atypical direction (there’s a large category of scholarships young trans people are increasingly being barred from, and some young trans people are being given a particularly harsh manifestation of the financial disadvantages associated with transition), but there’s also intense ablism and a strong absurdity to all of it.
The fact that its just normal in America that some teenagers will lose a scholarship because they get injured and that that will have a drastic change to their long-term finances is both on brand and fucking insane.
the right wingers don’t see any problem with this.