May I be amazing at you

There's going to be a more skating-focused post tonight.

Tessa's tweets often make me think of Tina Fey's memoir, Bossypants, recounting the ways people comment on the scar she acquired at age five, when someone slashed her chin: "'It's so beautiful.' Ugh. Disgusting. They might as well walk up and say, 'May I be amazing at you?'"

And sometimes Tessa's tweets make me feel as if I've accidentally subscribed to a self-selecting, trust-funded, real-world sheltered, sorority sisters' twitter feed, oblivious to the fact that its conversations are visible to the public.

John, the 77 year-old golden-ager value add on Tessa's plane ride. I imagine she's going to steer clear of "from the mouths of babes" anecdotes, but she can still meet unconventional looking people and report how real beauty comes from within.

That's the sort of elite-level, albeit inane, fortune cookie tone she produces, offsetting the purpose of her social media presence, which is her continuously schizophrenic image output:


Jennifer Lawrence wouldn't sneer at those boobs.
Look at those hips! Tessa's an hourglass and has
had shoulder reduction surgery as well. I think
that last was a bad move on her part.
Scott, OTOH, it can't be denied any longer
that that's a whole bunch of summers worth of
"summer weight gain." Luckily, these two
can gain and, more importantly, drop, 20-30 pounds
and back again with the click of a mouse.
And despite how .. substantial.. the two of them
appear in this image, the background, as is their
custom of the past few months, is skewed and tilted.

and promotional material:

I think we all know to expect increased image consistency in 2015, once the transitional phase is over.

With Virtue and Moir, I'm really looking towards the 2015-2016 season. If they don't compete, one wonders why a couple of married, retired figures skaters with a couple of kids, entering their late twenties, still finds it legitimately necessary, after more than a decade, to conceal their basic status from those incredibly rabid, overly invested, thirty-nine or so uber fans online, and from what these fans might say, think and do, that they don't do now, if the truth were acknowledged. What could happen? These fans might actually think stuff for five minutes before moving onto the next thing. Scott and Tessa would control the version of the truth that came out, including a lying version of the truth, and control any questions asked, including no questions at all. No problem. Maybe the reason is that there's yet another Olympics coming in 2018. And one after that! And after that! Best officially stay in the closet ... forever. Or maybe the exclusive club factor would dissipate, and they do seem to enjoy life in the bubble, along with all their friends, the Canadian media, other people with the same lifestyle - you know, the bubble full of people worth respecting, as opposed to those outside. It's not as much fun if there's nobody outside not (officially) knowing what you know.

Scott and Tessa have roped in what sometimes feels like most of Canada's tiny media/public relations community, its various affiliations, and all of its figure skaters, as collaborators. After the year that's passed, perhaps they want to protect their friends in the media who wouldn't want it demonstrated that, in addition to sucking up to Jian Ghomeshi for years despite believing he's an abusive creep, they all aggressively, downright gaslighted the public into buying into a married team of skaters as a single and dating others team of skaters, to the benefit of the sport of figure skating, which is already bursting at the seams with credibility.

Scott and Tessa have certainly shown themselves huge fans of figure skating so far this season, what with his promotion of curling, her "school > skating", their incredible team spirit during the Grand Prix Series, and only noticing figure skating when they want us, the targets of their lies, to pay to come see them get paid. That's all both figure skating - and us - are worth.