In China, that could mean do what the government says or be shot.

I'm not sure it is any more unhealthy than the figure skating, ballet or beauty pagent culture. Why is it that cultures dominated by girls are the "unhealthiest"?

I definitely include figure skating in my gymnastics stance. I was just saving it for 2010. Ballet, at least, can lead to a lengthy adult career and beauty pageants may increase emotional problems that lead to physical problems but they don't (so far as I know) directly cause physical damage.

Maybe because they generally don't recruit boys when they are tiny children for any of those things.

I never said those cultures were healthy, just referencing gymnastics since that's what prompted the discussion. Those are all cultures that promote super skinny bodies on top of being athletic which in turn promotes and can coddle eating disorders to maintain the perfect body.

With boys, emphasis is put on being muscular and toned. Girls is you have to be skinny, even when you have muscles.

It was fun to watch Olympics coverage in two other languages in France. (Euro Sport coverage was in German).

I even got to see some coverage of fencing, which was great.

For gymnastics, more than skinny you have to be tiny in stature - same with ballet. At least with contemporary dance, that has changed quite a bit. The main body type requirement is muscular.

OK keep in mind my views are very heavily influenced by having read that book ("Pretty Girls in Little Boxes"--see my previous post).

At least figure skating and ballet will garner a profession in a performance industry. Female gymnastics has NO performance career outside of a handful of Cirque jobs and the like (they have 9 Olympians on their payroll but I don't know if they are all gymnasts). Once you give up your Olympic/world competition regiment you are DONE. You start eating more than 900 calories a day (that's all the gymnasts are allowed to eat, even though they work out 6 hours a day), and you start having your period. Once you develop some semblance of hips and breasts, your career is OVER. And the gym and your coach? They will be busy working with prepubescent (artificial or otherwise) girls to mold them into the next Olympian.

Each of the tracks you mentioned have their faults. Interestingly, all of them are very stringent about food intake and a strong effort to stave off reproductive development (although that may not be quite so bad in figure skating or the beauty pageant circuit), but I believe all of them are exceptionally strict about dieting.

The thing is, when you take a 4-year-old child who has some flexibility or shows a bit of talent, and begin to mold them into these candidates, they aren't exposed to anything else--so OF COURSE they most happy when they are working out and they do well and their coach praises them. They are starved for affection and attention, and they know that if they don't perform well, they are ignored.

You know the irony of women's gymnastics? There is a single person on this planet solely credited with its current state of using little girls: Bela Karolyi. He was Nadia Comaneci's coach back when he worked with her in Romania, and he is credited with helping her perform the perfect 10s in the 1976 Olympics. It changed the entire landscape of female gymnastics. Up until then, most female gymnasts were oh, in their early 20s. There was a bit of controversy that Nadia was so young, but that all flew out the window when she did so well.

After that, there was a big movement to start them younger, to mold them earlier, and get them prepped to be Olympic-ready as soon as they were age-eligible.

And for all the harm that Karolyi did to women's gymnastics, the hunger for such success was so great that we embraced him with open arms when he immigrated to the U.S. to open his own gym here.

How is he so successful? A lot of people accuse him of abusing the girls. He berates them, insults them, is verbally and psychologically abusive to them publically. If you mess up, he won't even look at you. How's that for wanting your father-figure's love and acceptance?

I have no doubt that if the Karolyi's could get away with cheating and using younger girls, they would. Damn the US government and their record keeping.

Although, Karolyi has been VERY outspoken about the obviously younger than 15 girls on the China team.

I know a lot more about skating, ballet and beauty pageants (I hung out with Olympic skaters, danced myself for 13 years and was 1st runner up Little Miss America 1968) but I've never had much contact with gymnasts, so I can't speak for the sport knowledgeably enough to argue a point.