There is a particular kind of anger that comes from watching someone you care about be attacked by people who don’t know them.
I have been angry before. I have been angry about judging. I have been angry about politics in gymnastics. I have been angry about the way athletes are sometimes treated by the sport they give so much to.
But the anger I feel over the online comments directed at Manila Esposito is different.
Maybe because I have known Manila for about ten years.
I have had the opportunity to work with her, to watch her grow, and to see the person behind the scores, medals, routines, and headlines.
And I can tell you this:
She is one of the most humble and genuine people I have ever had the opportunity to work with.
Her gymnastics talent is extraordinary. But what has always struck me just as much is her work ethic. She is the kind of athlete who puts in the work without needing everyone to know that she is putting in the work.
There is no entitlement. No arrogance.
Just a young woman who loves gymnastics and works incredibly hard at being better at it.
And then there are the comments.
People sitting behind keyboards have decided that Manilla doesn’t look the way they think a gymnast is supposed to look.
Apparently, in their minds, there is still some idealized version of the “pixie gymnast”—small, tiny, almost impossibly delicate—that an athlete is supposed to resemble in order to be accepted as a gymnast.
Manila doesn’t fit their picture. So they body shame her.
Think about that for a moment.
An athlete who has dedicated years of her life to mastering one of the most demanding sports in the world is being judged by strangers for the shape of her body.
Not her beam work.
Not her floor routine.
Not her work ethic.
Not her courage.
Not her character.
Her body.
And that makes me furious.
Because I know the person they are talking about.
They don’t.
They know a photograph.
They know a television screen.
They know a social media post.
They know nothing about the young woman who has spent years working, sacrificing, failing, getting back up, and trying again.
They don’t know Manilla.
I do.
And what has struck me most about the way she has handled all of this is the same thing that has struck me about her gymnastics for years.
Grace.
She handled these comments with the same grace she handles beam.
That sentence keeps coming back to me.
Because beam is unforgiving. You get four inches.
You get a few seconds to convince your body and your mind that you belong on something that small, high above the floor.
And when something goes wrong, everybody sees it.
Yet Manila gets up there and does her job.
She doesn’t need to be the loudest person in the room.
She doesn’t need to prove herself to everybody.
She just gets on the beam and performs.
And apparently she has found a way to approach the ugliness of social media the same way.
With grace.
I don’t know if I can do that. I honestly don’t.
If someone said those things about me, I would be angry.
If someone said them about someone I care about, I would be even angrier.
There is something about watching a genuinely good person get attacked that makes you want to fight back.
And maybe there is a lesson in that for me.
Because defending someone doesn’t necessarily mean becoming as ugly as the people attacking them.
Sometimes defending someone means telling the truth about who they are.
So let me tell you who Manila is, at least from the perspective of someone who has had the privilege of knowing her for a long time.
She is a hard worker.
She is talented.
She is humble.
She is genuine.
She is resilient.
And she is a gymnast who has earned every bit of respect she receives.
She doesn’t owe anyone a particular body type.
She doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for how she looks.
She doesn’t have to fit somebody else’s outdated idea of what a gymnast is supposed to be.
She has already shown us what a gymnast is supposed to be.
Someone willing to work.
Someone willing to sacrifice.
Someone willing to get back up.
Someone willing to stand on the beam with the entire world watching.
And someone strong enough to deal with people who have never walked in her shoes.
I wish the people making these comments understood that there is a real human being on the other side of their screen.
I wish they understood that words have consequences.
And I wish they understood that athletic bodies are not costumes designed to satisfy spectators.
They are the instruments through which athletes do extraordinary things.
Maybe we need to stop asking whether an athlete looks like what we think a gymnast should look like and start asking a much better question:
**What has this person accomplished?**
In Manila’s case, the answer is pretty damn impressive.
But even that misses the point.
Because her value isn’t measured in medals.
It isn’t measured by scores.
It isn’t measured by how she looks in a leotard.
Her value comes from who she is.
And after ten years of knowing her, that is the part I don’t want anyone to forget.
So yes, I’m angry. More angry than I probably should be.
But watching Manila respond to all of this with dignity has also made me stop and think.
Maybe the real strength isn’t in firing back. Maybe it is in refusing to let other people’s ugliness change who you are.
She has shown me that.
She handled it with the same grace she handles beam.
**I don’t know if I can do that.**
But I sure as hell admire her for it.
