Ugh, I do not relish this discussion. McKayla Maroney is an Olympic medalist in gymnastics. She won a gold medal and a silver medal at the London Olympics, and she is retired from gymnastics now. You may also remember her because her “not amused” face went viral when she won silver. McKayla actually recreated the face with Pres. Obama following the Olympics, and that photo went viral as well.
So, McKayla is retired from gymnastics, but she still came out for the Olympic trials a few weeks ago to watch the new young women vie for spots on the team. When cameramen panned to McKayla in the audience, suddenly everyone asked themselves, “Did McKayla Maroney have some work done?” Suddenly the sporty young woman was replaced with a pouty Megan Fox-lookalike and people noticed. It became a talking point, and many outlets ran stories about McKayla’s “new look” and whether she had gotten some work done to her face. So McKayla has given an interview to say that no, she hasn’t had anything done.
What she wants people to know about the rumors that she’s had lip injections: “First of all, that I haven’t. And I’ve posted a picture on Instagram last night that was like, how do I make my face look like I didn’t do anything to my face when I literally have not done anything to my face? Growing up in the social media world, it’s tough. Your face changes, you get older, your face fills out, and you fall into liking makeup and different stuff like that. And for people saying that, for the most part — it would kind of hurt my feelings when you haven’t done anything. You just kind of have to keep being yourself and move forward with what you love. I just haven’t had anything to give to people, so they’re almost just picking at anything that they can to find something to talk about me for. It’s just one of those things right now and you just have to keep moving forward.
I spent some time looking through McKayla’s Instagram and… sigh. It’s not good. She’s 20 years old and she can do what she wants, that’s not my issue. My issue is that her Instagram seems to be full of Lolita-esque photos of McKayla making duck lips in bikinis or provocatively sucking on smoothie straws while wearing low-cut blouses. Again, that’s her choice and so be it. She can do whatever she wants. But she definitely has a “new image,” and I do think that lip injections are a part of it. She hasn’t veered into Kylie Jenner territory, but yeah… I do think she’s gotten some stuff done.
Also, having read the full Seventeen interview, I now know that McKayla is an actress, and she’s working on an album. She says her biggest sound-influence is Drake. Huh.
Photos courtesy of McKayla’s Instagram.
um, at this point, who cares? More on the war of the talentless hacks!
I like the cut of your jib.
Sad epilogue for such a talented athlete.
It’s a sad statement of what our society promotes as the ‘best’ goal for young women.
Hot at all costs.
I think the amount of training elite athletes go through at a young age can slightly stunt their emotional and social growth. You end up existing in a bubble, and I think it sometimes puts you at greater risk as you try to redefine yourself after your career. You are no longer McKayla the Olympic gymnast, you are now just McKayla. It’s a big identity change for someone so young.
Right? Excelling in fields outside of Instagram and Generalized Hotness doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Too many seem to want to cash it all in to be as hot and as famous as possible.
“I think the amount of training elite athletes go through at a young age can slightly stunt their emotional and social growth.”
This. Michael Phelps is another example of someone who struggled once he stepped away from the routine and training that had been his life. I think even athletes who aren’t at elite levels go through this.
The difference between ‘elite’ and the people who train with the elites is very negligible, especially to an outsider, at least in my sport.
I would never, EVER, had made the Olympics, but I trained with (not-so-great) Olympians. Same sets, same workouts, less coaching attention. So in certain ways the pressures are the exact same, for sure.
Slightly?
I don’t understand why McKayla is getting lumped in as a mess. She is a pretty normal person. Some of you are being way too judgmental. Most gymnasts turn out just fine.
Why should she be shamed if she has had lip injections? How is that anyone’s business but her own?
Why is it sad?
I mean, how is it much sadder than the norm?
Gymnastics is a sport that demands total commitement from childhood through puberty… and then you retire in your early twenties, having missed out on, basically all of life up to this point, with what will most likely be considered your ‘glory days’ for the rest of your life behind you.
This, the fact that we as a society are so ready to accept such treatment of young women and young people in general (ride ’em hard while they are children, then replace with younger models) for our amusement is disturbing.
One athlete becoming a vapid-ish young woman is not. Her being a bit makadjusted and infantile is expected, really, and she is doing quite well all things considered.
At least she’s happy?
I can’t begrudge her an instagram full of pouty selfies, not after knowing her coaches were assholes who ignored her injury problems for years and pushed her to starve herself, driving her into depression at one point.
And at least those selfies are things SHE chooses to put out in the world – unlike the nude pictures taken while she was underage, for maximum squick – that some asshole chose to release to the Internet. She reportedly had a really bad time with that, and no wonder – I would too, and I’m a decade older than her!
Did they accidentally cement her face into duck lip mode? Because she looks like an idiot.
She does look idiotic. And to claim her lips aren’t filled is farcical- anyone can see that.
Also, why do these injector hacks think this is a good fill pattern?? This” gummy worm lip” is just so bizarre looking . A more natural profile would be to inject around the peaks only, not trailing off to solid in the corners of the mouth. Thank goodness it’s temporary.
I think in addition to lip injections she did something to her brow line or whatever to make her eyes bigger. Kylie had that done too, I think. She also appears to have implants.
Yes, when your lips are (badly) injected I think you’d be WAY better off owning it and stopping the constant speculation. If you said, “Oh yeah, i experimented with some temporary lip fillers” and acted like you didn’t care, media would quickly lose interest and no one would remember. If you deny, it keeps people watching to *prove* you did it and *out* you so to speak…
…wait a minute. I just talked myself through it…you get more attention if you deny. Silly me!
Duck lip mode drives me crazy, and it doesn’t just afflict celebs and/or wannabes. I have a 40-something acquaintance who does it in every single one of her millions of FB photos. It’s truly appalling.
Oh I missed your comments. Or maybe I haven’t been around enough. Hope you’re well and feeling better.
And I totally agree with you GNAT!! 🙂
Hi, Mimz!! I missed you, too. Been having lots of company lately. That’s all. 😘
That’s good. It’s been the opposite with me, lots of lonely times. But all is good. Glad that you’re enjoying lots of company!!! 🙂 xx
Thank you! Yes. My teenager sister in law does nothing but pose like this, and it makes me want to vomit. ENOUGH with the duck lips already, OMG!!
I agree. I seriously don’t understand all the selfies and the duck lipped selfies are just too much. Reality, it is possible her lips are makeup and filters on the selfies. I agree more likely she had some things done, but still possible. If the world didn’t make such a big deal about it maybe these girls would finally get over it, and stop with it. We all need to stop obsessing about it, because I don’t really think it is good for girls in society in general. People are more than their looks, and the more we harp on it with girls and almost never boys really sends a bad message.
I was curious about who told her that was a good look!
I doubt anyone cares. But why do they all pose the exact same way all the time. Fish lips. I guess it is the Selfie culture.
Well…it is kind of sad to see that this is what an Olympic gold medalist has turned in to but it is her life and she’s entitled to live it the way she wants to. It’s just, if you’re going to proclaim yourself a role model, kindly put away half of your boobs and post anything but duck faces and gaping stares.
She has two Olympic medals, she can do the bikini duckface all she wants and she won’t be any less of a role model for it. Your average instagirl isn’t a top gymnast!
This^^
She gave an interview to a gymnastics podcast that made me really sad for her- she’s dealt with a lot from injuries to emotionally abusive coaches to suicidal tendencies. The sport has been the entire focus of her life and she’s SO young. It must be really difficult to adjust to ‘normal’ life once it’s all over.
I know, she’s barely out of her teens and yet at that age, she can no longer be a competitive athlete in the sport she’s trained in all her life. I remember everyone being amazed at Gabby Douglas making it back to Rio for a second shot, because that is SO rare in gymnastics.
And McKayla’s had a really hard time of it in many ways, I can’t hold it against her that she’s trying to be ‘normal’ in ways that we’d consider silly. Her coaches sound horrible.
Your face changes as you get older, but your lips don’t tend to protrude in a way that they didn’t before.
I don’t know. They look like injections to me. Some photos from 2012 she appears to have a really thin upper lip, but others look more like what the recent photos look like. I guess it’s technically possible she’s been duck-lipping in every photo? It still seems more likely that she got SOMETHING done though. I don’t think there can be that drastic of a change just from the way you’re holding your mouth – especially when she doesn’t seem to be doing any more than a vague pout in the photos.
Yes, the “duck lip” isn’t helping. However, Kim Kardashian gained weight in her lips when pregnant (which I didn’t know was possible). Olympic athletes have such LOW body fat that when they stop they do gain weight in places we assumed stop developing such as breasts and butt. I assume it could apply to lips too.
That’s fair – I tend to forget that she was an athlete at the top of her game during the older photos. Her body fat would have been mega low. Jessica Simpson gained a bunch of weight and her lips looked huge too, so who knows. Maybe it’s just the combination of the duck lips and more weight.
All of these girls are tiny when they compete. Aly Raismen who made the team this year is 5’2″ and looks like a giant next to most of the girls. Gabby Douglas is 4’11” and weighs 90lbs. These girls are small and short and all muscle when they compete, so in fairness it is possible to look very different when you aren’t training. I agree maybe not, but I’ll take her word cause it really shouldn’t matter and is no ones business but her own.
Lips get thinner as you age, not thicker.
Sad that the sex doll lock is the one that women want to look like.
No, they’re rather obvious.
Yipes…..her mouth looks painful.
Yeah, not buying it, sorry. I think she clearly is doing something. I’m so tired of all these young women wanting to look exactly the same.
I can’t imagine the pressure of competing at that level, at that young age, and becoming a meme after it (though a good natured one at least). She probably has a lot to work through, best wishes to her.
Yes the young girls have duck lips and big butts. The older women have shiny not able to move faces and Joker like smiles. Whether through makeup, selfie filters, injections or plastic surgery it doesn’t matter. My question is when did this become the definition of beauty? I missed the memo, and don’t think I like it anyway.
Basically if it’s the way you would look naturally…it’s bad.
If it would cost a lot of money and is very far from how you naturally look…it’s good.
You’re either too pale, too dark, too fat, not-curvy-enough, etc.
The only way this can be natural is if she recently found out that Ruth Wilson is her birth mom.
Hahahahaha.
I tend to say yes, she got her lips done. But then again, she also looks like she’s wearing a crap-ton of makeup. Fake eyelashes, pancake face, etc. So it’s sort of hard to tell.
I feel bad that she does this. I get that it’s normal for girls of her age group to push the limits and experiment, but the difference is that we didn’t used to have social media to do it. The only people who saw you that way were friends and maybe family.
I do wonder if she’s 100% okay. There are so many awful, horrific stories about Olympic athletes getting abused by coaches, mistreated, etc. She’s also in a sport where 20 years old is considered to be “over the hill.” That has got to mess with your psyche on some level. She’s considered “done” at an age when most young women are just realizing their potential.
Is that why she retired? Age? Because I feel like if you can still stick the landings and do the flips she should still be able to compete.
More than likely. Watch the Olympics. There are very, very few active gymnasts over the age of 18. At least not in the Olympics. In 2012, there was one Romanian woman IIRC who was 30 or something, and copious references were made to her age.
It’s not a matter of if she can still compete. I’m sure that she is still capable. But there’s a whole new crop of younger girls behind her who are just as motivated. And the coaches want winners, so they’re more inclined to pick the youngest girls, who they think are better.
I looked it up, and the average Olympic Gymnast is 16. When she competed in 2012, she was 16. The team overall was aged 15 (the minimum age for the Olympics) to 18. Nobody over 18. The oldest recent all-around champion was Nastia Luikin, who was almost 19 when she won. So yes, 20+ seems the exception in the sport.
ETA: this People article is about Aly Rasiman, who is competing at age 22 – she is referred to as the Grandma of the team. Seriously: http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20996464_21018742,00.html
Age (most gymnasts only make it through 1 Olympic cycle), injuries (she’s had multiple surgeries), illness (she’s been fatigued and had depression), abusive coaches, the works.
She broke her toe while training for London and was told to get it together or she’d be off the team. She wasn’t allowed to limp in front of the media for fear the team would look weak. I’m a huge gymnastics nerd, but they go through a lot and they’re just kids really. She’s said that she’s envious of Simone Biles because her coaches allow her to smile on the competition floor while she never could. I really hope she can find herself.
The sad truth is that even 18 years old is ‘old’ for a gymnast. Maybe someone who a little more involved in gym can comment further, but my mother is a high level judge so I hear some, but I’m not close to the sport.
Gym seems incredibly punishing on the psyche too. It’s one of the weight focused sports, and it also requires an amount of training that burns athletes out from a very young age. If I remember correctly it would be close to 40 hours of training per week on top of regular kid stuff.
I feel for McKayla. You go from living a sport, it is your motivation, your entire life and your entire definition of self. There is no room for anything else, and then it’s gone.
Sport is valued strangely highly, I remember a commenter questioning sport as a ‘better’ pursuit than acting. It’s something I never even thought of. Of course athletes are better than actors… But why?
I think part of it is our interest in excellence, but part of it is the obsession with youth.
Gymnasts need to have extremely low body weight in order to have the appropriate weight to strength ratio. A couple of things happen: they train very, very hard from a very, very young age which means that they burn out; they diet from a young age meaning that they don’t have great bone density (leading to breaks and fractures) AND puberty and young womanhood can wreck their careers. You do not see many elite gymnasts older than 19/20, though many gymnasts compete through college, which isn’t as rigorous.
Ah. Thank you for the replies everybody! Hope McKayla and gymnasts everywhere find happiness after retirement.
So yeah, this sport as it exists now at pro level is basically child abuse… and for what exactly?
Nice to know that we’ve moved so far ahead from Aincient Rome.
Oh ffs. Gymnasts are getting older, not younger. Google Oksana Chusovitina and Catalina Ponor, Ksenia Afansyeva… Gymnasts outside the US repeat as Olympians frequently. The US is by far the most competitive team to make, hence, fewer repeaters. The big deal about Gabby trying for Rio is the trend of all around gold medalists retiring, because they already achieved the highest honor. Turn off your sad NBC commentaries of gymnastics. They thrive on this crap. It doesn’t make it true.
There are monster coaches and maladjusted athletes in every sport. I’m not defending the practices of all the gymnastics nations in the world, but some of the responses in this post are so melodramatic and over the top.
This is why I would never push my kids into sports like these. You’re not likely to see the Olympics even if you’re amazing and your missing out on so much. I feel like a lot of sports have an unhealthy aura around them. I knew a girl who was competitive in ice skating and ballet and she was so good everyone was stunned when she dropped out. Found out she had anorexia (The ballerinas were CONSTANTLY told to lose weight) and that she had no life since she trained for hours in each sport every single day. You basically give up a normal child hood and teenage-hood in order to train. personally I don’t think that’s the best life. I’d rather my kids be happy and well-rounded.
Is it just me or did she get butt implants as well??
This! Why oh why oh why?
Oh, goid grief. Irish people just look silly with big lips. They don’t go with the rest of her face. My Mom used to try to push her lips out to be pouty and she didn’t need to because she was gorgeous without them.
She was born and raised in California. She’s American. Actual Irish people do not take kindly to Americans referring to themselves as “Irish”.
Sorry. Irish-American or Americans of Irish descent.
Starkiller, it doesn’t matter WHERE you are born. Your heritage is your heritage, regardless.
Her face now looks like 90% of all “insta-famous” girls these days. Dark hair, thick dark brows, big lips, falsies. I could not differentiate them any longer. It’s like those Kpop girl groups. They all get the same works done that it’s getting harder and harder to tell who’s who. omg
She reminds me of someone, but I just can’t put a face to the name.
lol
A lot of folks don’t realize how hard it is for elite athletes to go to a “normal” life after competing. Where hours and hours of their day were consumed by the pursuit of a single goal, many athletes struggle to adjust and find direction. I can’t imagine how hard it is for these gymnasts – they peak as a teenager, after spending all of their formative years training their butts off, dieting, focusing, sacrificing more than any child should need to. Not to mention, many gymnastics coaches are infamously hard on their young pupils (which is sounds like Maroney wasn’t immune to) and it’s an emotionally *and* physically draining sport. So maybe she got fillers, or maybe she was finally able to put on 10 pounds after a lifetime of watching every bite.
Im Over This Baddie Aesthetic nonsense these Tumblr and IG girl keep doing, that’s what you’re seeing, looking morose and like an eastern European Louche Kardashian is a thing now
Omg I’m deceased 😂😂😂
“like an eastern European Louche Kardashian” –
LMAO. Life received. QQ how do you do it?
I’m going with she did not, nor did she get any other work done.
This is a girl who has been a competitive athlete almost all of her life. She started gymnastics at 2 and training at a high level at 9. She has had little to no body fat and puberty was probably not something she went through properly, if at all. Of course she is going to look different now that she is not competing. She has boobs and a butt now and her face in general is much fuller. Her nose also looks a bit different now that she has a fuller face.
I’m going to guess that her body is now catching up (as best it can) with the growing that it never got to do for her teenage years. Faces and body change so much in puberty and we seem to forget that.
Gaining weight does not occur in the lips unless the rest of her face got fat, which it clearly has not. I have a friend from high school who was in competitive gymnastics and when she quit, she did grow a few inches and got boobs, but she didn’t get duck lips out of nowhere.
When I gain weight, I don’t get a fat face but my upper lip gets noticeably puffier. When my daughter is not in competition mode, she gets the same thing. Mckayla’s face looks much fuller to me, but I’m not an expert on lip jobs (I’ve seen one person IRL with one).
In one of the videos on her Instagram, you can clearly see that her lips are puffy on the inside. That only happens with injections. Girlfriend barely had a top lip as a teen. You don’t grow one even if you gain weight.
A whole generation of blow up doll fish faces.
One if the sad and dumber trends I’ve seen in a long time.
Wait, someone who went through the meat grinder of being a female gymnast at the most elite level isn’t 100% well-adjusted??
I think its more a commentary on the social media expectations for young women. It’s all about strut, pout, put it out -as Ms. Sheena Easton said several decades ago.
At first glance I thought it was Lilly Collins….
I don’t envy Olympic-level athletes (or those striving to be) at all! My niece was in “competitive” gymnastics from a very early age at it was mental the pressure and psychological damage she endured. By age 7 she was training 20 hours a week (3 hours, 4 days per week). She always sick and looked exhausted and stressed – my heart broke for her. The final straw for me was when one time while I was visiting we sat down for dinner and we had a potato dish of some sort. My niece started to cry because she wanted to have some so badly and was so hungry after training but had been put on “weight watch” by her coach and she knew there were too many carbs in potatoes and she “shouldn’t” eat them!!! This was from a 10 year old little girl who had just trained for hours!!! I was furious with my sister and told her to give her head a shake – 10 year olds shouldn’t even know about carbs let alone fear them! My niece was extremely talented but she was not going to be Olympic material (the kids who were already cherry picked and groomed to be were in another program all together). Thankfully she’s out of it now – but it took her having to have a full on mental breakdown before my sister and brother-in-law would see what was happening to her. Gymnastics parents make the “Cheer Moms” and “Toddler and Tiara” parents look sane!
I feel bad for this girl – her whole life has been so closely controlled, she’s been starved into perpetual prepubescence – it’s no doubt she’s going full tilt in the other direction and has finally developed an adult female body…….the lips though, who knows, who cares, after what I’m sure she’s been through she deserves to be happy in whatever manner suits her.
That is not normal, and not a normal gymnastics experience. My daughter was a gymnast. All her gymnastics friends, except one who has too pushy parents, love their team workouts. The ones who don’t, like my daughter, quit team and now does a one hour a week class. That’s how it should be
Only came here to say that the header pic made me think this was an article about Carice Van Houten, aka Melisandre on Game of Thrones at first glance.
You don’t gain weight in your lips. She’s clearly had some work done, and done badly. I hope she continues to develop as a person after a stunted childhood, and I am sooooo glad Marta Karolyi is retiring soon. She and the odious Bela may have trained world and Olympic champions, but a lot of what those girls go through is abuse.