Just how short IS short?

Dresses that is.


Here are some issues I encounter among adult skaters:

Undergarments
It's amazing how often I talk about underwear on this blog.

Really make sure you can't see through that white dress. A quality skating dress, in any color, will have an understructure made from a sturdy illusion, with the "fashion" dress constructed over it.  If you have a white or light colored dress that you really must wear, but it's see-through, you can have a seamstress add such an under layer (it's complicated but not hard), or get a flesh-colored (whatever color your flesh is) leotard to wear under it. Make sure that the leg openings and the straps of the undergarment are undetectable.

Too short?
Entirely your comfort level. Personally, I think skating dresses on anyone should cover their buttocks; with adults I'd add the word "dignity."  My preference  is no shorter than just above mid-thigh in front, and at or below mid-thigh in back.

Too long?
For adults, knee-length is not too long, but if you go with a dress this long, make sure the skirt is made of a very light weight fabric like chiffon so that it moves. Adults sometimes skate very slowly. A heavy skirt is just going to sit there, exaggerating the effect. Don't make it longer than knee length in the back, as this can risk catching the blade.

Pants!
Yes please. Pants are very classy on adults, with a light loose shirt that moves when you skate (see above). The shirt can be shorter than your butt cheeks.  Make sure the pants are narrow and LONG-- they should hit the floor at your heel when worn barefoot. Make them black. Colored or jeweled stripes down the side seam, or appliqués at the ankle are very nice. Don't wear those Chloe Noell pants with the spiral stripe that all the girls wear.

No real reason, I'm just sick of them.

Sparkles
I live for sparkles. And you really do need some jewels even for testing. Again, it helps with the illusion of movement, and sometimes with adults movement is all about illusion, because we don't move all that fast.  However, you don't want to be weighted down like the Virgin Queen.

Gloves

Are you on the Russian World Team? If not, please do not wear gloves for testing or performing. It looks silly. (It looks silly on the Russian World Team, too, but they all do it.)

Boot covers and over-the-boot tights

Boot covers only with pants, and then only in the same color as the pants. Please do not ever wear over-the-boot tights for testing or competition. They do NOT "make your legs look longer." If you're wearing them to disguise your beat up skates, here's a news flash-- you can polish skates with shoe polish.

Modesty

For adults-no backless, no plunging necklines and definitely no cleavage. Anyone with a bounce, if you know what I mean, should look for good supporting undergarments (ones with real support, not those stupid "sports bras" that just mash you flat without really dealing with the bounce problem). Judges really hate bouncing boobs. Remember the word "dignity."

What are your favorite do's and don'ts for adult skating garments?

Comparing skaters

The International Skating Union Judging System, or IJS, was instituted to attempt two goals: first, to reduce the appearance of collusion and, yes, cheating, among the judges,  and second, to reduce subjective measures of judging as much as possible.

In other words, they're trying not so much to stop comparing apples to oranges, as to find the commonalities between apples and oranges and to judge those objectively.

One of the most common parent conversations at skating practices goes like this:

Parent A: I see Mary has her double lutz.
Parent B: Yes, but look at those legs. Of course she's landing that jump, whoever saw thighs like that on an 8 year old.
Parent C: Her folks can afford four lessons a week, too. If I had that kind of money, Johnny would have his lutz and then some.

In other words, we're looking at all those apples and attributing their success to the fact that some of them are actually oranges.

Lots of factors go into success as a skater.  You can't really compare them, which was the point of IJS-- ranking skaters to choose a winner was inherently unfair. How in the world do you compare Michelle Kwan and Surya Bonaly, two brilliant skaters with nothing but the framework in common.

But compare them we will. We'll go ahead and ascribe positive motivations to the people that came up with the IJS, and try to figure out how to compare our own apples and oranges, from the stands, without the catty comments (okay, maybe a few catty comments).

Age
Age is less a factor than you might think in actual skating ability, as anyone knows who's watched the little 6 year old dynamos who keep crushing your talented 9 year old at Regionals. It's better, both for your own ego and as an objective factor, to consider a skater's maturity.  A 9-year-old who cannot focus on a lesson or direct her own practice is going to be less successful than a 7-year-old who can.

Body Type
Not a factor, unless your body type is "40 pounds overweight." There are certainly some physiognomies that help a skater-- flat bosom, long waist, bow legs-- but we've all seen enough body types to understand that there is no body type that actually precludes skating success. Body type complaints and kudos (think Rachael Flatt and her supposed problems because of "sloping shoulders," or the positive but frankly racist assertions about Asian body types) are about aesthetics, not athletics.

Trajectory
A kid who is not aiming for Nationals is not going to Nationals. I don't care how talented he is.  To achieve a goal you have to set it. No one gets into elite skating by accident. You can't compare your recreational skater, who likes to try new stuff, to the 30-hour-a-week phenom.

Motivation
Motivation pretty much equals Maturity + Trajectory. You have to know your goal (elite skating, International competition, Gold level tests, a certain jump, a solo in the ice show, or whatever), and then manage the steps it takes to get there. Without motivation, the game is over. And mom can't supply it. Further, motivation doesn't just mean "motivated to win competitions." Kids are motivated by, and toward, different outcomes. Don't compare a kid who's motivated to win Nationals with one who's motivated to landing the axel before graduating high school. Both are worthy goals; comparing them is pointless.

Coach
Even given talent, motivation, and trajectory, a good coaching match is the single most critical factor in a skating career, whatever the goal is. And yet it's not one of the things you commonly hear parents comparing, or praising. You hear lots of praise for coaches-- "we have the top coach," "our coach has taken xx number of skaters to nationals," "he has the most students," etc. But the most important factor-- that wonderful coaching relationship-- is often ignored.

Level
Don't even. If your Jennie is in Freestyle 1, and "rival" Susie is in Freestyle 5, why do you even care. Everyone goes through the levels, at their own pace. I do not want to hear skaters compared based on their level. Sh! I mean it!

Financial
 Out of your control. If Mary can afford four lessons a week, good for her. Work with what you've got, and don't teach your child to make excuses based on external resources.

Why does it matter how I look

The recent posts on What to wear and What not to wear sparked a lot of debate, mostly along the lines of "why should it matter." I've written about this before, but it bears repeating.

This is a huge issue with figure skating and the other artistic sports, gymnastics and dance. Strangely, in the most artistic of them, dance, the body-type restrictions have started to be overcome through such forward-thinking companies as the Joffrey in Chicago, whose founder specifically sought out non-typical body types. They have had squat, and heavy, and bosom-y, and most notably non-white dancers in the company since their founding.

Inevitably when following a Twitter discussion, or just listening to the live media comments, at some point someone will bring up the costumes. If I had a dime for every time Dick Button mentioned that so-and-so is "a beautiful girl" I would be a rich woman.

These sports rely, for both scoring and enjoyment, on how they look. The problem comes when we overlay cultural definitions of beauty onto the successful execution of the skills. This is not the same thing as costume. For me, I want costumes to be neat, I want hair to be simple and safe, and I don't want to see undergarments, even on very young children.

The bigger problem is that while we consciously get indignant over costume--as one commenter put it "why should my daughter's undewear have anything to do with her skill"--we are unconsciously not even considering the fact that the judges are selecting, through gamed scoring, for specific body types. While judges tend to be pretty fair in testing situations, I maintain that even at the lower levels they will favor the look over the skills, especially when all other things are equal. The thin, flat-chested pixies start getting held up because judges like thin, flat-chested pixies.

We had an amazingly talented skater at our rink who grew a beautiful, full bosom in her mid-teens.

At which point her coach told her she was done, because she was now "too fat." Trust me, the ONLY fat on that girl's body was in her breasts. She still had the jumps, she still had the art. But her coach, and the judges, decided she didn't look right, and that's how they scored her.

I maintain that Rachael Flatt is a perfect example of someone repeatedly criticized not for her skating, but for her body type. A lot of the discussion was "no one knows how to dress that girl [to hide her sloping shoulders and thick middle.]" But what was meant was that she didn't look like our image of a skating champion. I really believe that consistent underscoring by judges was a way for them to get rid of this young woman who just didn't look right.

A generation ago they did the same thing to Surya Bonaly and Debi Thomas, who had the audacity to be black. The irony there, of course, is that the person who beat Debi Thomas at the Olympics was Katarina Witt, whom I used to call "hope for fat girls everywhere." Sometimes the talent really does trump the look. But like women in the board room, they had to be head-and-shoulders better than the sylphs they were beating.

The unfairness of this is maintained by the scoring system--where there is a tie (rare in the IJS but common under 6.0)--the performance marks break the tie. If the technical mark broke the tie, as it should, you would start seeing a wider range of body types, and probably more consistent skating as well, as skaters and coaches started realizing that they couldn't rely on the more subjective component (i.e. the artistic) score.

Children should not be fat, but frankly if we stopped excluding the fat ones from praise for taking part in the beautiful sports, maybe some of them would start feeling like they could be fairy princesses on the ice too.

I still don't want to see their undergarments, by the way.

Too fat, too tall, too not-the-perfect image of a skater

This blogger brings up an interesting issue- is there a "perfect" body type for a figure skater?

What if we did that for every public profession. Made the way a person looks the first criterion for whether that person can do that job- sales person, teacher, cop. Well, in fact, we used to just that. Until recently, for instance, we all knew what a president looked like, didn't we?

Old white guy.

And yet there's that young black guy in the White House.

Yes, there is a "perfect" body type for a skater--not too tall (but not too short), slim, small-bosomed, low center of gravity (i.e. short legs), legs straight or slightly bowed, square shoulders. Oh, and white. Or better yet Asian. Did I mention that? If you're younger than a certain age it's hard to understand the sea change that was Surya Bonaly and Debi Thomas; how shocking and empowering those skaters were, not just to black girls, but to all girls who felt different in skating or in life. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the phrase "I didn't know black girls could skate!" Or how many, white, black or brown, thought, geez if she can overcome that kind of prejudice, then who am I to let my knock-knees hold me back.

And then there's Katarina Witt (bosom), Rachael Flatt (sloped shoulders), Carolina Kostner and Megan Oster (tall), Tara Lipinski (knock kneed), Evan Lysacek (really tall). In fact, I can't think of a skater who is perfect.

Because there is no such thing.

There is no such thing for so many reasons. First, not only does the perfect skating body not exist, it isn't necessary. There's probably a perfect body for walking, too. If you don't have it, does that mean you don't walk? A skater isn't machine tooled, where if a part doesn't meet patented specifications, the whole thing stops working. If I had to put a number on it, I would say your body and your talent are less than half of what you need to be a skater. As, or more, important, are your drive, your intelligence and your motivation.

Ambitious coaches will look for the whole package--body, talent, drive, motivation, ability to pay. If you feel dismissed by an ambitious coach, figure out which one of those things is missing, and overcome it. You note I don't say "fix it," because like I said, you're not a machine with replaceable parts. If you're not quite smart enough for law school, but you want to be a lawyer, you study harder, you don't decide to be a ditch digger instead.