Simone Biles has become the face of Gymnastics in a very short period of time. The 25-year-old rose to prominence after her debut at the Rio Olympics.
Five medals at her first Olympic meet, including four gold, set her on a path to GOAT status. And the athlete has not looked back since. Biles has proceeded to become the most decorated in the sport since then. The gymnast has become a household name in the US. However, numerous impediments arise with popularity.
John Legend relates with the plight of Simone Biles and other female athletes
The most annoying aspect of reaching celebrity status is the online “trolls” consistently pursuing their preference for cyberbullying. People experience the most pestilential form of this on social media platforms.
Therefore, being the winningest gymnast makes Biles prone to such attacks from trolls regularly. In light of this, the athlete collaborated with a skincare brand to release a video titled SK-II STUDIO Presents: “VS Trolls.” They released the video two months before the Tokyo Olympics. It tackled issues such as body shaming and stereotyping.
EGOT-winning singer-songwriter John Legend composed the track of the video. Its lyrics deal with issues of cyber trolling, which most people active on social media must have faced at some point in their lives.
During an interview, Legend said about the gymnast, “She’s one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever seen in the Olympics, but she’s also dealt with a lot of challenges so we wanted to kind of address all of that within this film.”
Drawing from his family’s ordeal, the singer added, “I felt like I was able to empathize with Simone’s story because I’ve been right next to my wife when she’s dealt with online trolls.”
Addressing the issue in detail, he continued, “I feel like women get a lot more negativity online than men do, and particularly for female athletes often times they have to deal with, ‘Oh are they hot or not?’ at the same time they’re dealing with, ‘Are they really good at their sport?’ “
Legend’s wife faced a similar ordeal
The issue of trolling has become rampant in today’s global society that has grown even smaller after the advent of the social media craze. And Legend understands it well as he, too, had his brush with online trolls, albeit indirectly.
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Legend’s wife, Chrissy Teigen, bore the brunt of these attacks. The trolls took things to such extremes that Teigen had to delete her Twitter account for a while. However, the celebrity has returned to the social media platform since.
The post “Women Get a Lot More Negativity”- Oscar-Winning Singer Once Empathized With Simone Biles, Drawing Similarities With His Wife appeared first on EssentiallySports.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Essentially Sports
