Avoiding Winter

In an icy January, I cling to something I love.

For a figure skating fan now, it is the best of times and the worst of times. It's the best of times because it is an Olympic year, with Milan 2026 starting in just a few days, with national champion Amber Glenn and medalists Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito skating for the U.S. women. It's the worst of times because the country has exploded in federally-led violence, with ICE shooting and assaulting non-violent protestors.

My social media is a bizarre mix of smiling ice skaters and screaming people in Minnesota. I have attended a No Kings protest here in Alexandria, last October, but beyond social media posts, my writing portfolio has been embarrassingly empty so far addressing this issue. Sometimes I walk down the sidewalk imagining someone will seize me from behind, grab my backpack straps, and shove me to the ground.

I can't say I'm the best person in the world. I try to be honest, but the truth is I've always been a little detached, wanting connection with others but struggling with a sense of alienation for most of my life. Having not fit in as a child, having experienced bullying, I used to stand up for people who were being belittled and targeted when I was in school. I feel like I need to do the same thing now, because to just go forward with routines - as much a matter of default as that can be for me - is not okay when routines mean life is being crushed out of thousands of people around me.

Some people say figure skating is cheesy, and some say it is for the rich. As for me, from my perspective, figure skating is partly for the performer in me, partly for the introvert who needs performance to have meaning, and partly for the meaning of life.

In college, after watching or performing in a play, I would walk down the sidewalk surging with adrenaline and feeling on top of the world, thinking that only experiencing that kind of energy - performance energy - could make life worth living. I didn't believe in religion. Isolated in school, I barely had friends. But when I got on stage, I had permission to speak and interact, to touch, to experience things my own inhibitions and terrors didn't let me do off stage. Even as someone in the audience, I got reassurance from knowing I was sitting with dozens or hundreds of other human beings who had also come to the same place one night to see and feel something.

I am not on the front lines of the protests against ICE. I am not in Minnesota. I am not even someone brave enough to have a podcast about these issues, but I do believe in the transformative power of art.

Art does not have to be fancy. Even in its most basic form, it's a way to reach people, heart to heart. When Jimmy Ma skated to medley of songs from the Village People and the Weather Girls this year, the figure skating fandom blew up a little bit. The Village People, once iconoclasts associated with gay liberation in the 1970s, have now disavowed their songs' association with gay culture in their embrace of Trump, threatening to sue anyone to claims the songs are inherently associated with gay themes. Jimmy Ma, who follows 90s icon and openly gay 1996 U.S. Champion Rudy Galindo on Instagram and recently liked Rudy's throw triple axel with Johnny Weir, also lost six friends in the crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 into the Potomac River approximately a year ago today. Though grieving, he chose to do a program this year that was so exhibition-like, campy, and atypical for him that, combined with his age (30 is old for a figure skater), it caused some viewers to think he was mocking figure skating and mocking gay men. It caused others, including me and podcaster Jackie Wong, to be especially moved.

Here's why I was so moved by Jimmy Ma's free skate: he did it to move past his grief, but it also seemed political. He's not religious, and doesn't believe in any Christian message associated with YMCA. He dressed in a sparkling purple outfit. He went to Saint Louis, Missouri, dressed like this, knowing Missouri is a red state, and combined the Village People medley with the Weather Girls' classic, "It's Raining Men," a campy song that gave a distinctly gay vibe and served the purpose of removing any ambiguity as to whether the Village People songs were meant to be associated with Trump.

Jimmy Ma is American but speaks Chinese; he may be a first-generation American. Many people in the figure skating community are. Jackie Wong himself is. As a coach, he is known to be encouraging and open; he is also one of the few coaches at his rink who speaks Chinese. After the plane crash a year ago, he spoke out against Trump's anti-DEI language and encouraged the community to come together in mourning.

Attacks by ICE have deepened the anti-DEI focus of the Trump administration over the course of the last year. A lesbian woman was shot in the head at point-blank range. A male ICU nurse who was defending a woman ICE shoved to the ground was shot 10 times as he lay motionless, despite having never drawn his legally-carried weapon. Children have suffered; parents who took great pains to escape to the U.S. for refuge have suffered.

Amidst this, I saw Jimmy Ma standing up for the gay community when he took to the ice, and for immigrants and people of color. He has always wanted to support freedom of expression in figure skating, freedom to make the boundaries of figure skating larger and more inclusive. Sometimes, admittedly, he did not always put all of his heart into it. Sometimes, he played the character of a macho man on the ice in Evan Lysacek style, dressed in black, though he always said his favorite skater was Japanese icon Daisuke Takahashi.

Meanwhile, his best friend Amber Glenn is modeling long gray slacks and an androgynous look, doing athletic triple axels, and skating a short program to Madonna's ground-breaking song Like a Prayer, another song that covers racism and violence and is apt for our times.

Freedom of expression for everyone can be simple - it's the right to wear bright colors, or shout with joy in the street, to have enough to eat, to be warm in winter. It's the right not to be silenced by an oppressive government that won't let you talk. It's the right not to have your words intimidated out of you.

Sometimes figure skaters are like the symphony violinists of the sport, people like Guillaume Cizeron, who are masters of technical movement, and traditionalists or newcomers marvel at them.

However, when the world is like Bolero - falling apart and crying to stay together - in my mind, what makes me feel like we will be okay is not just the steady song of the symphony orchestra, much as I hope it will continue. It's the grief and the camp that lets me avoid winter of the soul. When I'm crying, I want a simple sad song, and when I'm happy, I want to be part of an audience that's dancing with me, not in my own head. I want to know that we, as a country, support each other again.

This February in the D.C. area, as we endure the polar vortex and the literal six inches of solid ice on the ground following the January 24th storm, this is what will carry me through the Olympic season as the monks marching for peace enter Virginia.

Note: Adam Rippon's Intrusive Thoughts podcast inspired me to write this essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpCLaKRsVKY&list=PLx10X1JOKXOKQg-WnJ506HHgCPm04V...