Salon.com > Lolo Jones

Lolo Jones compares Trayvon Martin witness to Tyler Perry’s Madea

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:58:00 +0000

Olympic track athlete Lolo Jones has found herself at the center of controversy again, this time for comparing Rachel Jeantel, the 19-year old star witness in the Trayvon Martin case, to Tyler Perry's black matriarch character, "Madea."

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Many found the remark offensive. But Jones, who has apologized for her ill-conceived attempts at humor before, has not yet responded to her critics, at least on Twitter:

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Instead, she issued the following statement via Twitter:

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The Olympics’ schizophrenic gender politics

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:00:00 +0000

During the Olympics, we get to watch all sorts of women play all sorts of sports. That is no small deal.

Unlike in our everyday sports experience where men are the assumed participants unless otherwise specified, in the Olympics, events are tagged “men’s” and “women’s” equally. For once, “men’s” is not the default. Instead, pop culture at large invites us to learn these women’s stories, trace their journeys, and praise their accomplishments.

Women’s visibility in the Olympics is a double-edged sword, though.

The Olympics is an event predicated on nationalism, a manufactured collective “us.” People compete as part of a nation and, in turn, the nation embraces those athletes in ways that it fails to do in the day-to-day. The same belief that leads people to desire border fences, to malign immigrants, and to justify preemptive wars is the one that creates a metaphorical umbrella under which all athletes, male and female, find themselves during the Olympic games. Women’s efforts on the pitch or in the pool matter because they help fulfill the uncomfortable need for “us” to be better than “them.”

Olympic women’s burden

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Over the weekend, Jeré Longman of the New York Times published this piece about female Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones. It is, by all accounts, pretty scathing. Alyssa Rosenberg calls it “one of the nastiest profiles” she’s ever seen. David Roth calls the article “unfounded and unfair,” and Isaac Rauch of Deadspin found it so harsh that he goes to considerable effort to tear it apart line by line. Additional takedowns here and here.

Lolo Jones cries for Lolo Jones

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 19:15:00 +0000

After Lolo Jones' fourth-place finish in the 100m hurdles Tuesday, Allen Barra declared in Salon that "No one cries for Lolo Jones." It was a reference to the outstanding envy and schadenfreude the 30-year-old has inspired, from that seriously bitchy New York Times piece about how her "image is everything" to her silver medalist teammate Dawn Harper's remarks that "I've put so much out there and sacrificed so much, I feel like my life story has kind of been trampled on for the last four years.'" ESPN, a little too gleefully, characterized Jones' finish yesterday as a "very disappointing fourth." She finished one-tenth of a second behind bronze medalist Kellie Wells. OH MY GOD WHAT A LOSER.

Yet it turns out that someone does cry for Lolo Jones. Lolo Jones.

No one cries for Lolo Jones

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:03:00 +0000

Jim McKay used to say that every day at the Olympics gave you something to cheer and to cry about. I don’t know if Lolo Jones cried last night after failing to win a medal in the 100m hurdles, and I’m fairly certain that none of her U.S. teammates cried for her, but there’s something about her whole story that is very sad.

You’ll remember that she lost in Beijing when she hit the next-to-last hurdle – and how weird, the next-to-last, not the last when you expect your energy to give out – and just missed out on the gold.

It’s fairly safe to say that of all the American athletes who had yet to win a gold medal, Lolo is the most hyped, making the cover of Time, a spread in Rolling Stone, a semi-nude shot in ESPN magazine, a guest spot on Jay Leno. In fact, she probably received more press than all other U.S. athletes except our swimmers, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte.