i really don’t care if i lose followers for this, but i’m spilling my tea right here and now: i’m glad tonya harding was at the golden globes
tonya harding grew up poor in largely a single parent household, at points living in her car. her mother physically and verbally abused her from the time she was four or five. she got married as a teenager to a man who would abuse her, too, and even go so far as to try to kill her on one occasion.
moreover, tonya was a strong figure skater - the first american woman to land a triple axel! - but she wasn’t conventionally attractive, she sewed her own costumes, and she was more athletic than graceful. despite completing equally demanding routines, she was consistently marked down in her scores based on her presentation. contrast this with nancy kerrigan - beautiful, graceful, from a supportive and loving upper-middle class family on the east coast.
now, i’m not saying what happened with nancy was okay, because it was absolutely not (though the way she treated oksana baiul and her silver at lillehammer were of questionable character), but tonya harding has never admitted or been proven guilty of being involved in the attack on nancy. herself and her ex-husband both insistent she didn’t know anything about it, and she was never charged with that by the fbi.
because, here’s the thing: there was never supposed to be an attack on nancy kerrigan. her ex-husband, jeff gillooly, and former bodyguard, shawn eckhardt, planned to send threatening letters to nancy to scare her before a competition, after tonya had been sent a death threat. tonya knew this, which is admittedly awful. however, eckhardt hired friends to attack nancy while she was practicing for nationals. he says that jeff was also involved in the planning of the attack, but this is also debatable.
okay, so you don’t like tonya harding - cool. fine. but you can’t deny that the way america treated her before the attack on nancy was a blatant example of classism - they didn’t like a poor redneck representing their country in figure skating. she was black-balled from figure skating, and mocked and ostracized by the rest of the country, until she became nothing more than a punchline of a joke, for something she wasn’t even convicted of.
there were a lot worse people in that audience than tonya harding.
