The Company You Keep

Empowered to own her power - not just the girl in the red dress

So she's never going to pull her head out from up her hind end? At least not in public. This is the persona. Trust Tessa Virtue to carry on about her internal conflicts over winning her second Olympic gold medal. Very 2014 of her but Virtue Moir are not big on new material off the ice.

I was hunting for but cannot find another article I read from a year ago portraying Tessa as stressed (tension lines around her eyes!) from the (oxymoron alert) Canadian superstardom she has not pursued - it just keeps coming at her against her will. But never fear, she's polite and professional no matter how much she wishes it would all go away.

I'm not calling her out on the privilege of being a massively talented, classically beautiful three time Olympic medalist/two time gold medalist in ice dance (really three times gold if we counted the actual skating), accomplishments achieved with her husband and the father of her kids (well, in 2010 just her husband, in 2014 and 2018 the father of her kids) who bores everybody rigid naval gazing in public about her faux ambivalence afterwards.

I'm calling her out on her negging her own choices for the sake of some vacuous branding. This woman who constantly promotes herself a la every basic influencer and minor celebrity (though they pretend she's major) on the planet, dedicated herself heart and soul to something she passionately wanted (the 2018 Olympic gold). Once achieved, here comes the whining. She did the same with the "Is all I am a skater - I want a balanced life as a socialite!" shtick in the W Network's 2014's demented fan fiction "Tessa and Scott" and now she's doing "Is all I am the girl in the red dress." Her conflicts are so esoteric I have no idea what they accomplish for her in terms of business. People just end up sighing, "She's so beautiful."

What is the problem here? What else will people remember you for? Your scintillating interviews? Your neverending "Will we or won't we" with your own husband and baby daddy?

I compare Katia Gordeeva and Tessa Virtue because I believe they are similarly talented and obviously share other commonalities.  Katia Gordeeva won two Olympic golds by the time she was 22, but she has been an accomplished businesswoman in the decades since, earning a more than comfortable living and retaining a sufficiently high public profile. Do we ever hear Gordeeva bitching that she's mostly remembered for her matchless partnership with her husband, Sergei Grinkov, who has been deceased since 1995? No. Do you ever hear Katia Gordeeva complaining that she's mostly seen as a skater? No. She adores being a skater, as much as Tessa adores being a skater, it's in her blood as much as it is in Tessa's blood, and somehow she doesn't feel the need to make up shit about how that's a problem because there's other things she likes. Go ahead and do those things! You ARE doing those things. You get to do those things because you were the girl in the red dress and before that the pink dress and before that the white dress, and those moments in your career are responsible for your opportunities today. Come up with better problems other than this solipsistic garbage. Besides, that is rude to your fans. Maybe that's a value add to her. They really love to gaslight fans with the push/pull.

For the fans who love and rewatch that performance as all great performances are loved and rewatched, who were, as fans, ecstatic for themselves and for Virtue and Moir, it's a sour note. Oh, the skater herself is over it and doesn't even relate anymore.

No, she doesn't have to be Katia but as they share many of the same factors vis a vis the public, their resumes, their beauty, the preoccupation of much of the public with their respective love stories, and their skating, the difference between how one handled it - like an adult - and the other handled it - like a control freak only also like a cossetted, insulated, blinkered and sheltered dimwit - are instructive. IMO.

This Hamlet routine is stupid. She's making bank off her looks and fame by collaborating with beauty and fashion brands who, from time to time, partner with some socially conscious initiative and that's the whole nut. It's not that serious. If she were going to be fulfilled by doing something other than being"The Girl in the Red Dress" she'd do it. Instead it's an MBA in business she's going after so she can make even more bank off her looks and fame by collaborating with more beauty and fashion brands who ambulance chase the latest cause and recruit their influencers and brand faces to buzzword the hell out of it. That is all the thought and investment that goes into it.

****

I don't know how transactional Tessa Virtue's friendship with Jessica Mulroney has been but it's something I've always side eyed, mostly because of the terror that Tessa would incrementally transform her beautiful self into an injected, be-fillered, fake-tanned, inflated frozen mess, destroying her looks before age 35. I was dreading inchworm Joker lips stretched ear to ear, as even some of her current images evoke that aesthetic. Perfectionists have been known to be dysmorphic, and there's a little bit of a disconnect between Tessa's social media messaging of "you are enough" "Blah blah makes you unique" "empower" "feminist" - and her super filtered images. Even her "Look ma, no make-up! posts (in her case it's no eyebrows and pale lashes and freckles and some super self-consciously adorkable attire) are filtered into glowed up holograms. When a woman as beautiful as she is constantly puts out images of herself that look the way Tina Fey described the aesthetic - "a blank white paper plate with eyes and lips painted on", the empowerment rap rings hollow.

Anyway, Jessica Mulroney has been cancelled. Her bride show is over, her collaboration with Smash & Tess is over

Mulroney and Tessa for
Smash & Tess

There's pictures on social media of Mulroney behind the scenes at an arena and Tessa interacting with her young daughter, and images of Mulroney, Tessa and others in a grouping with Mulroney looping her arm through Tessa's leg.

Jessica Mulroney was known to be a piece of work so I did at times wonder about Tessa's public affiliation with her. Did she not pay attention to how Jessica Mulroney handled other people? Did it only matter how she kissed Tessa's behind?  Remember when Jian Ghomeshi, another Canadian public personality with a problematic reputation behind the scenes long before he was publicly outed? And his flirtatious drive-by in the W Networks's "Tessa and Scott"? Why "empower" these people?

Here's what Mulroney did. Behind the scenes, she threatened an influencer, Sarah Exeter, less well known than she, a social media "friend", a black woman, from discussing Black Lives Matter. Exeter had made the most generic imaginable post of of BLM support. Mulroney DM'd her to quit it or she'd speak to Exeter's brand partners and end her career. After making one of those "I'm backing off from social media to reflect" moves, she went to Exeter's DMs and threatened her with a "liable" suit, which is just embarrassing. Come on lady. Even with a few glasses of wine in you, it's not a difficult word to spell. If you know the word to begin with.

I don't know Tessa, maybe it's time to have more than a "difficult conversation" (seriously?) about the "idea" (the IDEA???) of privilege, but what I really think is you are superficially well-intentioned but not well-informed, not even in your semantics.

Part of Mulroney's apology:

"You are right when you say 'this s— needs to stop,' " Mulroney said. "As leaders, we need to join hands and call out wrongs. I know we have different experiences. And that is something that, even in the course of a heated argument, I need to acknowledge and understand. I am unequivocally sorry for not doing that with you, and for any hurt I caused."

Yeah. What the hell is Mulroney a leader of?

More Exeter:

"Listen, I'm by no means calling Jess a racist, but what I will say is this: she is very well aware of her wealth, her perceived power and privilege because of the color of her skin," Exeter continued, adding that these aforementioned traits gave Mulroney the "confidence to come for my livelihood in writing."

How do you hang with someone who weaponizes privilege as Mulroney does but you remain oblivious? Someone who, when she issues a threat, undermines the whole thing because she can't spell? She's not benign, she's terrible. Even the bits that can be seen of her instagram, she's TERRIBLE.

At some point having it both ways - existing inside a protected little bubble of you, your husband, your kids and whatever else resides inside there is irresponsible when you insist on living a public life and profiting from a public life and engaging in public life by lining yourself up with a progressive profile, promoting (buzzword alert) authenticity, AND feeding a completely phony narrative about yourself.

Tessa and Scott's kids will never go hungry, will have their education paid for, and will live comfortably, materially, all of their lives, and none of that is due to Scott and Tessa's lies. So, in a way, they're hiding behind their own family to camouflage their immaturity, snobbery, cowardice and exploitation.

There are no excuses. IMO she should withdraw from her little messaging sideline of empowerment and just do her sponsorship and branding tie ins, and own that neither she nor Scott are interested in becoming adults, and prefer the business model they've had all their lives - other people map it out for them, do the screening and vetting for them, and they have input on areas of concern but don't own their shit.

Very much looking forward to Scott's "wedding" this summer, as Tessa will bring her "Bfriend". I envision a classic facebook skater wedding throwback - a local hall/cafeteria, familiar Moirs, potluck, solo cups, nobody from their competitive career. All of it photographed at some convenient point this past February.

 I don't think even Max Trankov could stone his way up to attend this one.

P.S. I used to think this could go on as long as Virtue and Moir wanted it to, which at this time, more than ten years on, appears indefinitely. But I think tides and times are against them, and there's going to be a breakout at some point against all social media garbage. And it won't come from the media, but through their own bad judgment.

We're all in this together

Tessa Virtue's social media is just so crappy. Scrub off the pretty face and sweet demeanor and we've got a woman positioning her deceased grandma and COVID19 to market Nivea's anemic oldster care promotional scheme. If Gran were alive, how would Tessa & Co. be helping "Nonee" navigate COVID, wonders our heroine. How about you? Any venerable relatives still kicking? Then why not nominate your elderly loved one at the link in Tessa's bio and they just might receive one of Nivea's 100 care packages it is distributing across all Canada. You read that right  - 100 - throughout all of Canada. Get to nominating. But while you're at it maybe hit the local Rexall's for some hand cream and scented lotion as the odds seem steep. How many seniors does Canada have? 4.8 million. Nivea, take a seat.

The still-not-officially-retired Maia and Alex Shibutani raised 30k for first responder PPE. They go-funded it and kicked in 1k each. So extra. They should have just assembled a hefty marketing contact list compiled from thousands of fan email addresses and demographic particulars, held a raffle, distributed five N95 face masks across Michigan's health care worker population and called it doing their part. Anybody dead in their family work in health care? There are tie ins if you look for them!

I kept backtracking to be sure it wasn't 1,000, surely (still pitiful). 10,000? Nope. 100. For that Tessa pulled this up from the archives.

Stop selling Nonee for cheap Tessa.

Virtue Signalling

This must have been a blog heading a bunch of times before, but it's always apt. Obviously also low hanging fruit, but nevertheless.

Screen shot of Katia Gordeeva working out
while in quarantine. She doesn't
always get the video framing right. I can
relate.

Per instagram Gordeeva practices her skating program on the living room carpet and figure skates down an ice coated hill. No humble bragging - she's sharing some of her life and it all looks fairly amateur with no enhancement features on. Her social media is not full of "positivity." It's full of gratitude, encouragement and support. None of it looks like product.

More than anything else and even now, she's a figure skater and works her ass off to remain one.

It's compelling to watch someone who was once such a guarded personality even before the trauma of early widowhood be so open, so appropriately, on social media. She's just being social on social media. She's not prostituting her private life, She maintains natural boundaries.

I know I'm practically a stan, but I'm so impressed by Gordeeva. Nobody had more of a right to lie her ass off and manipulate the shit out of her enormous and obsessive fan following. For years she was stalked (it's archived on an old usenet forum as well as fan forums - fans would go to her rink in Connecticut, hang out, watch and follow her, then come back and report). After Sergei Grinkov's death, fans were obsessed with her dating life. In the way of figure skating fans, many hoped she'd marry a comforting, companionable sort of sexless dude so they wouldn't have to think of her being attracted to a man other than her late husband. Somebody attractive was by many considered a betrayal.

She was by all accounts a dream to work with but fan-wise she was a closed book. She was also raising her younger child and her fatherless older daughter. She kept her mouth shut - she's the poster child for never complain, never explain. Dave Lease (Skating Lesson) once wrote an account of her at a sponsor meet and greet and remarked, "She was beginning to not understand English." which was one of the few times he's ever been truly on point and cracked me up.

Never complain, never explain is a psychologically sound approach for people in public life looking to keep their private life private. It's "Let them talk." It works. It's the opposite of being a control freak and it also limits the shelf life of people's obsession with you. Gordeeva did that, and then at some point decided she wanted to live proactively as a public figure instead of guardedly and reactively, and of course she's brilliant at it.

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I feel if they'd been more famous, V&M would have said yes to this in a second.

The infamous "Imagine" celebrity circle jerk.
This facial expression alone.
There are some great parodies.
A fave is Nicole (Derry Girls) Coughlin's.

For anyone familiar with astrology they'd know that Scott Moir is practically the avatar of a Virgo and Tessa is classic Taurus - creature comforts, loves sleep, loves food. And stubborn. When they're dug in, they keep digging.

I haven't read this about them, but to me a Taurus woman is as clutch as it gets. Tessa has been in three Olympics and delivered perfect, and absolutely full on  performances each time. No other Olympic skater or team has done that. Her commitment in the crunch is absolute. Not every performer or public personality has her talent, but most Taurus women seem to be notably all in even if the building is burning down around them. Cheryl Burke - a DWTs dancer - could break two limbs in performance and you'd need a stun gun to get her to quit or drop her game face. Queen Elizabeth is another Taurus. Tina Fey - I wax hot and cold on her lately but she's got that laser focus. There wasn't a shadow of nerves in the two live performances of 30 Rock. Indistinguishable from the filmed show, while allowing for the rhythms of having an audience. I think Taurus women are the least likely type to ever ever choke when the stakes are highest. But there's a flip side.

She has the Taurus total commitment when engaged in her job, but Queen Elizabeth was famously stubborn during the whole Diana's death debacle. Yes, the public reaction approached mass hysteria, no, the flag didn't need to be at half mast, sure, it made sense to keep Diana's sons in the country versus taking them to London to experience the frenzy. But. Some common sense. There was ambiguity in Diana's status - she wasn't just an ex. She lived on crown property, and was mother of the next heir. Something about Her Maj's stubbornness short-circuited her emotional and practical intelligence. I'e read there was a come to Jesus to get her to bend, and it got ugly.

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Tessa and Scott surely have various rationales to keep this going, but it's plain reverse engineering by now. No narrative they could produce would stand up to even casual interrogation, but they don't need to be concerned. Any rationale would be accepted on face value by the only media that covers them - the entertainment media. They could go all out. Kidnap threats, nervous breakdowns, stalkers - anything at all. Could contradict themselves seven times over in in one go and nobody would point it out.

I do think in this instant Tessa's stubbornness is a cloak for being chickenshit. That's all it is. She's hiding behind her CV.

 Courage as a human being is a more impressive accomplishment than spectacular performances on Olympic ice. A human being is an integrated entity. You can't have integrity "here" and be a smarmy manipulator "there" and still have integrity. You can't blithely appropriate a global respiratory pandemic to lend some manufactured credibility to your ten years and counting fauxmance scam while rah rahing front line workers and local businesses, and still be a genuine person.

What entitlement looks like.

And I don't know how grown a man can be if his sense of humor, common decency and self-respect has regressed since 5th grade. Scott's current faux girlfriend is just a calculated trigger. They couldn't resist the "partner" joke aimed at inciting distress in what they consider a low-information audience. It's small.

I've said before I think they believe all their public niceness and faux earnestness and courtesy and politeness somehow sanitizes their lying and the really malicious streak that's always been an unsettling facet. But it's the opposite.

While Virtue and Moir and Gordeeva Grinkov have been compared endlessly, when it comes to integrity, authentic strength, genuine courage and living out what you say you believe, they're a universe apart.

Double wedding

So SOP - and still cringe-making - when Virtue and Moir get shameless, they turn on the earnestness. Here, they're exploiting a real life catastrophe to reinforce their gaslighting.

I often get the vibe that they believe if they're 65% sincere ("In many ways, we're just like you. We feel your pain and wish everybody well and are so so appreciative.") it mitigates the 35% percent manipulation and lying (i.e., the faux factual parts of everything they say and present). So, that ratio means they're genuine for the most part, right?

But the 65/35 tactic is 101 in the playbook of every narcissist out there (check out the famous East of Eden description of its amoral villainess, Cathy). The 65% sincere is just the poison pill that gets you to swallow the garbage. Narcs have been on trend for a decade, in part, I believe, because PR entities have employed narc tactics in service of their clients. Tessa and Scott were early adapters.



I think this situation up here is just a narrative extender - similar to how Marina Zoueva used to extend the impact of required elements with music and dynamic choreographic embellishment before and after. Morgan Rielly and Tessa help buy some time before fans start wondering when Scott and his lovely fiancee' will tie the knot already.

Extracting a quote from a Buzzfeed piece I'm linking just below it:

One firm promised to “use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes."

buzzfeed alternative reality

Buzzfeed is U.S. celebrity-adjacent, needs the same access and to receive the same press releases everybody else gets, so it's decided to focus on how Chinese PR and digital companies create alternate realities for its clients. Which is to say, the U.S. (and Canada) do the same thing but it's better to come at it from the China angle rather than be blacklisted. Of course the U.S. and Canada would never condone such practices and in fact have probably never even heard of them until Buzzfeed got them up to speed.

It's all normalized now, which means it's moral.

Skating:

Scott. If he'd squatted and done this on two
feet, maybe he and Tessa would have
won the free dance.

At least Tessa Now Has a Plus One to Her Husband's Wedding

The lucky guy is the on on the right.

Always of note that when Scott has a fauxmance, we must prove it with smiley huggy, kissy smoochy vacationy social media drops suggesting privacy and alone time. When Tessa has a fauxmance, her entire family of origin (as opposed to her family with Scott) is her bodyguard or there's a visible wingman/wingwoman/wingpeople as above, or it's a public event. Has Tessa ever held hands with a fauxbeau for our viewing edification? Tentpoled her way across the gap between their torsos to gingerly touch lips? Done a social media dump so we can see the evidence?

Why the double standard. Tessa needs to step up.

A few years ago I read The Big Short, a successful quasi-comic story centering on the precarious (as it turned out) housing bubble of the mid-0s. What stayed with me was learning that terms for financial products are intentionally obscure. The name of an investment term is not going to tell you what it means - it may mean the opposite or have no relation to the name.

There may be a facile, quasi-legitimate explanation for this custom but obviously the natural supposition is to assume banks and investment companies want a barrier between their understanding and the client's ability to understand what's being done with their money.

Here an aggrieved Papadakis & Cizeron fan on youtube weighs in on the results at Europeans:

Word salad matching the floaty. metronomic incoherence of Papadakis & Cizeron's out of sync, lowered center of gravity, all hands on deck, two-footed mish mash of skating skills.

Confident fans of this stripe still exist because while figure skating has rules, codes, definitions, and criteria, not only have these been dumbed down and not only has wiggle room been built in and not only are what rules and criteria still exist often ignored in the scores, but the figure skating markets itself as performance, not sport, and its participants as emotional and theatrical performers, not athletes.

****

Checked in on Virtue and Moir and could only find lots of stuff like this:



and this



Here a glossy Tessa once again delivers the same painfully anodyne point she's been recycling for a decade. The importance of using her "voice" to empower (retire that word! Retire that fucking word!) and inspire girls. Cautioning how the sport puts so much emphasis on aesthetics. Tessa, the greatest ice dancer of all time, has had a post-Olympic career with an explicit and implicit focus on how beautiful she is no matter what's coming out of her mouth. Well, beautiful AND adorable because one wants to be accessible. relatable. I wonder if when she delivers copy like this for the hundred millionth time if she ever wants to bash her own head in. Our takeaway here is she wants girls to know it's important for even female athletes to be fit. Good Christ. Two Olympic golds and that's what she's got for us.

Needless to say she's embodying a classic contradiction between words, the format in which they're conveyed, and an immaculately enhanced appearance (in what is already a conventionally beautiful woman).

Although she's speaking softly and earnestly, the overall message is more this (From Crazy Ex Girlfriend):

Well dang

This whole thing. I did a dive into non mainstream web pages and forums*, hit the expected mudslide, and saw myself out.

When it comes to versimilitude, you can't
beat figure skaters. But I think her story
might be more interesting than his.

I call twins in 2020.

I've looked at a bunch of pictures from the Meryl Davis and Fedor Andreev weddings and Marina Zoueva certainly managed to hide from the camera whether it be Town & Country's or People's.


*Everything is mainstream for all intents and purposes but meant non pay for play publications and pages.

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Every good thought to and for this one.

Maia Shibutani