When Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and William Dean Howells founded the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, their highest priority was round-the-clock coverage of World War Hair. Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic proudly carries on this tradition by posting random nonsense about black women’s hair.
"[Sha'Carri] Richardson’s hair speaks to the complexity of her journey, signaling joy, imagination, defiance, authenticity, and excellence—sometimes all at once," @jemelehill writes: https://t.co/FGopiR8Wbv
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 2, 2023
These days, most world-class athletes are fanatics about conditioning, which means they don’t do much of interest other than compete and practice to compete. E.g., Shohei Ohtani barely does anything during the six-month-long baseball season other than play baseball, travel, work out, sleep, and eat room service (his first visit to a restaurant since spring training was during the All-Star Break).
Sha’Carri Richardson, however, is a lady 100 meter sprinter. Like all 100m runners, she has to work out less per week than just about any other famous athlete. It’s fun that 100m runners have a lot of time on their hands to have a life. Here’s a Usain Bolt beer commercial making fun of other athletes’ fanaticism:
Lady sprinters like Flo-Jo, Gail Devers, and Richardson tend to use their ample spare time on self-decoration: hair, jewelry, and nails. There’s something of a handicap principle involved of trying to intimidate the other sprinters at the starting line: I can haul all this gold and weave down the lane and still beat you.
But, also, they like dressing up (or down, depending upon how you look at it).
