No Dankes!: Figure Hating

Does anyone else feel unprepared for the Olympics this year? Like they came out of nowhere?

I don’t know why but I’m really just not that into them. And the winter ones are my fave!

Nevertheless, I have managed squeeze in my main squeeze – figure skating! I’ve watched both pairs programs (Shen and Zhao are so goddamn cute, SO happy for them!), and the men’s short program (free skate is tonight).

Flying through the air and falling on your ass aside, there is one aspect of figure skating that I deem positively terrifying. One quintessential characteristic that always makes my skin crawl with disdain.

What, you may ask, is that flamboyant little facet?

Why, can’t you guess?

The costumes. Good LORD, the costumes! I thought the 80s were over. Through. Finished. Finito. But much to my chagrin and sheer horror, that dreadful decade is destined to live forever on ice. The 80s have immortalized classless, tacky, bedazzled outfits.

The vicious, vision-violating monstrosities that men and women – especially the men, what is WITH all the GLOVES?? MJ tributes all around? – don are downright blasphemous.

Dear, sweet boys: This isn’t the Ice Capades. It’s the Olympics. Could you try a decent costume on for good measure? Could you live your life to a 21st century tune?

I did love Brian Boitano (well to be fair, I think my mom loved him enough for both of us...I must have watched the program that went with that outfit a million times); I liked Elvis Stojko; Brian Orser was OK. But they were no dashing divos. The skaters of this century should take a design hint from the debonair Douglas Dorsey in The Cutting Edge.

Oh how I LOVE the scene where he and Kate are getting fitted in those outrageously contemptible costumes. The seamstress contemplates where to place a piece of flair and our main man Doug says something like, “I know…how about here,” and rips the god awful costume apart. Go Doug! Boy after my own heart.

So you missed Tuesday’s short program performances? No worries. Here are my Kings of Costume No-No-No’s straight from the Vancouver dragway:

Johnny Weir(d)