It's Complicated
My husband and I had lunch together this week. Even though we both work from home, we rarely sit down to share a meal. I can probably count the number on one hand.
As we sat at a local bakery with our soup (FYI corn chowder), the conversation turned to Kobe Bryant. In addition to reading the tributes to Kobe, my husband also revisited the 2003 sexual assault case. He noted the similarities in the victim shaming and abuse of power in that case to Chanel Miller’s experience, the woman who was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner and who recounted her experience in her book Know My Name. It struck him how the narrative has focused primarily on Kobe as the hero and superstar—his presumed redemption—and how the vast majority of news outlets either didn’t mention the sexual assault case or glossed over it in their articles after his death.
And I found myself in a curious position. I’m by no means a big basketball fan or a Kobe fan. Yet, as we sat there, I found myself not defending Kobe but saying it’s complicated.
When I first heard that Kobe was a passenger in that helicopter, I scoured Twitter for news and wondered how people would handle his past. One of the difficulties of trying to reconcile and reckon with someone’s legacy, especially in the age of social media, is that it’s too easy to boil everything down to this or that, right or wrong, black or white. We’re encouraged to pick a side.
Yet, Kobe could be many things—an incredible basketball player, a man accused of sexual assault, a devoted father, a philanderer, a fierce advocate for women’s sports—because Kobe was a human being. As Laura Norkin writes in InStyle:
“It is possible to make space for all of these truths without appointing oneself judge and jury on a posthumous sentence he must now serve. It is possible to say “Kobe Bryant broke records, inspired young athletes, changed the game, had a family to which he was lovingly devoted, and also was the defendant in a rape trial that was dropped, a civil case that was settled out of court and never spoke of again.” His accuser exists. She is not some figment of the past we should sanitize out of a messy story in order for the Hall of Fame plaques to remain clean. They should remain, but include the whole truth.”
While some have been skewered for talking about the rape case in the aftermath of his death, it’s not too soon to talk about it. We have to talk about these messy, uncomfortable incidents, rather than glossing over them or making them a footnote in the name of memorializing someone. We have to figure out how to make space for all these truths because they are all real and they all matter.
OK, I wasn’t expecting to write about Kobe at all in this newsletter. I’ve been trying to figure out why—despite not being a basketball fan—I can’t stop thinking about Sunday’s accident.
Part of it is being a mother of an almost 13-year old, Gigi's age, and my heart breaks. 13 is so young. It’s devastating. I keep coming back to Gigi and all that was ahead of her. (Here’s a great tribute to Gigi from Molly Knight at The Athletic) Part of it is knowing there’s nothing like the grief that accompanies the sudden loss of a parent or family member. Nothing can prepare you or your family for that and my heart goes out to all the families who lost loved ones on Sunday.
I don't know. It's just sad all around.
Since I’ve rambled on enough, I’ll wrap up with a couple of new stories from me and a couple of recommended reads:
What I’ve Written
The Freeride World Tour Commits to Equal Prize Money (Outside)
The Survivors Left Behind (Columbia Medicine Magazine)
Are Personalized Vitamins Worth the Hype? (LIVESTRONG)
What I’ve Been Reading
Their Son’s Heart Saved His Life. So He Rode 1,425 miles to Meet Them. (Bicycling)
Cheer is Built on a Pyramid of Broken Bodies (The Atlantic)
Can the Fitness Industry and Body Positivity Coexist? (Elemental)
Whatever Happened to _____? (Longreads)
The M Word (Sufferfest)
Thanks for reading.
Christine
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