Kim Yu-Na: Beauty Distilled!

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I've just finished watching one of Yu-na's performances, and I'm absolutely ravished!  Every once in a while I see someone doing something so breathtakingly beautiful that for a few seconds I feel life is so utterly unfair, before I console myself that beauty isn't everything.  (Yeah, right.)  In figure skating (named, as it happens, for the 'figures' they trace on the ice: figure-of-eight, for instance, rather than whether they're overweight, or whatever), the beauty of the art is so intricately and inextricably connected to the beauty of the performer that the two are almost inseparable.  I've been in love with Peggy Fleming and the oh-so-cute Dorothy Hamill, as well as the charismatic Katarina Witt.

In a sense, the Olympics as a whole does embody the willingness of many of us to put more subtle values aside, and revel in pure physical beauty, and beauty in motion.  We're willing to forgive athletes a great deal because when we appreciate them, we're doing so at rather a more primal level.  (Some athletes, unfortunately, are unable to see the difference between the occasional indulgence and perpetual license.)  I think Frank Deford said this first, or at least before I did.  I could swear he used the phrase "primal level" at least once in the last year.

In related news, there is a huge controversy over Tiger Woods's so-called sex addiction.  Bill Maher has some insightful things to say about it.  On the serious side, why couldn't he (Tiger W.) clear his hobby with his wife beforehand?  I think more understanding wives are sorely needed.  On the other hand, maybe he did, but she was too embarrassed to reveal that fact to the public.  On the third hand, maybe they had agreed to a no-disclosure clause, according to which if Tiger went public with his extramarital affairs, he would support her claim that she was taken by surprise.  Bestselling novels have been written on flimsier foundations than this.

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