The Beauty of Gliding: Figure Skating Politics and the Many Pleasures of Life

On a recent visit with an old high school friend, she pulled out old photograph albums from when we were synchronized swimmers. One photograph has haunted me; it is of our team in “costume” prior to performing our routine. The routine was my first on the senior team, and my embodied memory is of strength and increased skill development and ability. But this routine was characterized by our coach and teammates as our “oriental routine”; the music was from Miss Saigon and our costumes involved Mandarin characters, chopsticks in our hair, and white makeup and bright red lipstick resembling a Geisha girl (the Japanese and Chinese combination reflect our ignorance). Over the years, I came to understand the depth of our racism and cultural appropriation and have used this as a learning opportunity. Rand’s book Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure on and off the Ice analyzes these types of contradictions; the pleasure and joy in physical ability that come with figure skating alongside the politics of accessibility and discrimination that plague the sport.

Red Nails, Black Skates is a personal examination of the world of figure skating that successfully interweaves anecdotal narratives with sharp analysis of rituals and regulations that govern the sport. Divided into eight chapters, each with three to four short essays, the book covers diverse topics from changes in scoring to cultural appropriation, the pink politics of breast cancer, and gender and sex policing. The book draws on Rand’s experience of becoming an adult figure skater in her early forties and is informed by insider knowledge and participant observation. The book surfaced as a way to encourage Rand to compete in the Gay Games: having the motive of doing research provided the impetus to compete. Disappointed by the lack of queering taking place, Rand revised her book project to instead focus on the “workings of pleasure, power and politics” (12).

The book begins by introducing the reader to figure skating culture, through discussion of the complexities of scorecards and the common—though criticized—practice of sandbagging, whereby more skilled skaters can compete at lower levels to ensure medaling. As the book progresses, Rand analyzes how various aspects of figure skating privilege some bodies over others. In the chapter “Booty Block: Raced Femininities,” Rand outlines how instruction on movement, such as “straight spines and tucked butts” function to reinforce the predominance of white bodies in the sport under the guise of “vertical alignment” (131). In several places, Rand highlights the financial barriers to skating, including coaching costs, rink rental, and health care costs, as well as further limitations informed by class once a skater enters the skating world. For example, Rand notes that some well-connected coaches and skaters get access to changes in skating rules in advance of others, granting them unfair advantage (38).

A central theme throughout the book is the way that gender, sex, and sexuality are regulated within figure skating. A notable example is Skate Canada’s initiation of the nicknamed “Tough” Campaign, intended to highlight the “difficulty of the sport” (154). This campaign was interpreted publicly as a way to counteract the common stereotype that all male figure skaters are gay. This interpretation was given further weight by former skater Elvis Stojko, who stated that men’s skating is about “power and strength,” not being “lyrical or feminine” (155). Gender, sex, and sexuality are strictly policed in figure skating in everything from the color of skates and prescribed outfit options (though Rand points out that outfit designs for women incorporate the potential for crotch shots during spins!) to partners whom one is allowed to pair with (always heterosexual), to specific training on how to “skate like a girl” or “skate like a boy.”

Alongside her sharp and engaging analysis of figure skating, Rand suitably partners short personal essays on pleasure, including her love of her skating scars in contrast to those from her biopsies, her...