_______________ ICE FOLLIES BY CINTRA WILSON (02/20/98)

Thank God for Cintra Wilson and her refreshingly schmaltz-free take on the ladies' figure skating. Although I must admit that I'm a huge fan of those little whirling girls (I'm glued to the tube whenever the ass-kissing-on-ice show is on), Cintra is right on about the ridiculous judging, especially the horrifyingly obvious racism when it comes to the consistent shunning of Surya Bonaly. The judges' preference for the doe-eyed, little-girl-playing-dress-up style of skating is stifling the sport -- it's too bad that those little whirling girls aren't allowed to grow up into sexy, confident women on the ice. Bring back Katarina Witt! Thanks Cintra! You rock! -- Ami Berger I very much enjoyed the article by Cintra about the women's figure skating -- it showed the figure skating from the other side. There are 28 or so skaters who are there, giving it their all, but we aren't likely to see them because they aren't in the top 5. This probably holds true for all of the events at the Olympics. I'll probably never in my life get to actually go to the Olympic Games, but thanks to Cintra I have a taste of one part of them. In this case, personality doesn't take off points. -- Brian Reeves Cintra Wilson's diatribe against the two teenagers who won the gold and silver medals in figure skating was so arch and mean-spirited that I was taken aback. Yeah, I know, she's got "attitude," that all-important if irritating and trite element of magazine writing these days. And she sure described why she didn't have a good time among all those goofy lower-class ladies who like figure skating and those robotical teenagers who are good at figure skating and thus are apparently beneath contempt. But guess what? All I got from reading her commentary was a sense of HER as a robot, automatically and instinctively sneering at anything that smacks of bourgeois sensibilities. She wants "soul" from her figure skaters, she says. But it's "soul" by her definition. That apparently has something to do with open sexuality, which is OK by me, but maybe not what we ought to expect from a 15-year-old. Me, I expect triple jumps and fun dancing, but then, I also think Tara Lipinski has one of the most expressive faces I've ever seen, and can't imagine where Wilson gets the impression of "robotics." Michelle Kwan's grace and concentration also apparently don't hit a chord with Wilson, but that shows Wilson's limitations more than Kwan's. I think that seriousness, that terrific focus is intriguing, not robotic. I like that tension between Kwan's carefulness and the need to present ease and elegance. That's interesting. So is Bonaly's continued challenge of the judges' tolerance for hotter routines, and all the figure skaters' attempt to meld athleticism and elegance. Maybe Wilson's forgotten, when she accuses these young women of being soulless and robotical and all that, that these are just kids. Amazingly athletic and disciplined kids, it's true. But they are kids, not straw men for Wilson to shoot "attitude" at. She doesn't know them, doesn't know their souls, doesn't know anything about them except what she perceives through her jaundiced filter of irony and anomie. Her dehumanization of them (yeah, that's what "robotical" and "soulless" mean) is unjustified and vicious, and probably tells a lot more about her than about them. Get a life, Cintra. And lose the sneer. Your face is going to freeze that way, you know? -- Alicia Rasley SALON | Feb. 24, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| SALON'S OLYMPIC COVERAGE BY GARY KAMIYA AND CINTRA WILSON

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