@ZacEfron 😍❤️💋 ilysm😭 pic.twitter.com/dm05MEIa2q
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) December 25, 2014
Attention Zac Efron – Boy, you in danger! We discussed the other day how Ellen DeGeneres exposing Simone Biles’ crush on Zac led to them Twitter-flirting (Flirtwitting? Twirting?):
@ZacEfron Thanks Zac! I hope you can watch Team Final tomorrow night.
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) August 9, 2016
Kaiser linked the story Wednesday about Zac making his way to Rio seemingly just to congratulate Simone and the US Women’s Gymnastic Team:
Although sh-t like this is doing nothing to diminish my crush on Zac, one person isn’t giving him Heart Eyes currently – Simone’s other pretend boyfriend Arthur Nory Mariano. Mariano is a Brazilian gymnast who just won the bronze medal for his floor routine in Rio. Simone and Mariano met at the World Championships in 2013 and speak frequently through text and social media. They communicate so often, Simone calls him her “Brazilian boyfriend.“ So when he saw Zac moving in on his girl, Mariano responded with this:
The Portuguese portion roughly says, “Get out of here, Zac Efron! Are you thinking I’m some kind of fool? I’ve been with her since 2013. She’s my girl…We have a brick bond!”
Oh snap – two hunks pretend-duking it out for the right to call themselves Simone’s pretend boyfriend? This all makes me so very happy! I do have a way to settle this matter, though – US Weekly reported that Simone is Dancing with the Stars number one choice to compete on Season 23. Instead of the usual roster of a dozen pairings, just have all the people competing for Simone’s hand have a giant dance off. The final contestant gets to be Simone’s pretend boyfriend. Oh who are we kidding, Simone could handle all the pretend boyfriends she wants. I am practically glued to Zac’s social media to see his next move – and I swear it has nothing to do with how his arms look in pictures like this.
Photo credit: Getty Images, Instagram, Twitter and WENN Photos
Cloying….
Maybe I have a black heart, but I totally agree. Enough. Men don’t need to lay claim to a woman, anyway.
I feel like your disgust is misplaced. It’s all in good fun – they aren’t actually “claiming” her.
Somehow it seems worse because there is no actual romance involved. Maybe I’m crazy but the faux possessiveness feels cavalier to me. *shrug*
So tired of people who find the negative in everything. She is a teenager. She must be on top of the world that her crush acknowledged her. I am so happy for her. I wish the Beatles or Bob Marley or the Jackson Five had given me a shout out when I was her age. It is all in fun – lighten up. In fact if Idris Elba wants to make a claim on me, I would be happy to be his possession.
Come on! She’s a kid and this is adorable! In no way does my husband “lay claim to” or “own me,” but I still get butterflies when he calls me his girl! And he’s my guy.
And the theatrics of her laying on the floor…such a teenage reaction and it’s precious! She’s not a 40 year old! Let her be a kid!
Eh, I don’t find this any worse than when women joke about their “celebrity husband” and whatnot. And in this case, I find it less problematic than usual because a young black woman is being heralded as a highly attractive partner, mostly because of her incredible talent and skill.
Aww, both of the guys are cute! Go Simone, pick whoever you want 🙂
Best pretend boyfriends ever.
…or pick both!
Seriously adorable! Team Simone!
This is too cute.
Simone- the Brazilian guy is very cute! Lock that down!
Isn’t he, though???
Efron would be a massive upgrade
Ok, I normally hate Zac but that pic of him picking up Simone is warming up this hag’s heart.
Lovely.
One of them ought to make it official….
And Simone, don’t do DWTS! Do something interesting and great!
–TheRealPinky
I agree, completely.
DWTS would cheapen her ‘brand’, in my opinion.
Simone dwts are for those stars who are down in their careers and looking to make the easy buck. DWTS want you only for RATINGS, nothing more. You are doing well with your endorsements and should consider your brand going forward in life.
She needs a Cover Girl contract. Those gorgeous eyes could sell a lot of make up.
Lol this is funny. Also proof of the international bonds some of these athletes make. Simone is having the best time
Simone is absolutely adorable. Those pics of her with Zac make me smile so hard.
I’m loving all of this. It might even get serious with Zac, now Nory… everyone is 100% sure he is not into women.
How does everyone know this? Because he’s a gymnast? Or do you know something the rest of us don’t?
He is gay He used to date Federico Devito.He also has a solo video on Pornhub.
lol this is cheesy but kind of awesome. Simone is her own girl and does not ‘belong’ to anyone but people can flirt away all they like.
Did she “pass out” after seeing Zac? That’s the cutest thing ever!!! I love him for going over there, I also have a shameless crush on him so this doesn’t help.
Hahaha that’s what it looks like. This is all adorbs
That Brazilian gymnast to me is way cuter. And they have more in common. Or maybe it’s just my dislike of Efron… My boyfriend has a man crush on him that is so disturbing. I don’t know if it’s just because he’s French or 21 but I find it very odd and it makes me dislike Efron more. I always tell him he should crush on someone manlier.
Out of all individuals of the OG, this girl is the best. She seems so sweet and genuine. I say girl, cos she looks so young and innocent, not cos I do not think she is an amazing woman.
She is on top of the world. You go Simone Biles…
I said this in another thread, but I’m really wordied about what gymnastics has becoming. It seems all the elegance and artistry are gone. Simone, while tehnically very good, has no elegance of gymnasts past, like Nadia Comaneci for an example.
Sigh…
Every sport goes through changes. Frankly, gymnastics is over due. They need to get rid of the rules of hair and make-up and they need to change their outfit. If the men are not competing in a speedo then there is no reason for the women to be competing in an outfit that is increasingly getting smaller.
Now where have I heard this before?
Ah yes, everyone said the EXACT same thing about Surya Bonaly.
Things that make you go hmmmmmm………………
Hmm is right Kitten. The fact that she makes it look effortless is it own sort of elegance I think. Plus, I’ve always loved the power houses, like Dominque Dawes in her day. Strength and raw power combined with a flawless routine is plenty artistic to me.
Yuuuuuuup.
I love Surya Bonaly, I think she was so underscored at times. I cheered when she did her backflip and landed it on one foot at the olympics and stuck it to the judges!
I used to get so angry at the attitude and poor scoring Surya received. She was amazeballs!!
The sport has got much harder than it was in Nadia’s time. I love the old floor routines from the 80s too, but there’s much less time to be dancing around when you’ve got to build difficulty with double twisting double back somersaults in order to win. There’s also a worrying tendency to equate ‘artistry’ with body type among gym fans. Simone Biles might not have the lines of a Bolshoi ballerina, but she’s got engaging choreography that suits her personality and that she performs to the max while doing the hardest tricks in the book. That’s pretty artistic in my eyes.
Yes, when you watch old routines from back then the degree of difficulty seems almost laughable.
I don’t get the “lack of artistry” comments about Biles at all. Yes, she’s extremely athletic but when I watch her it’s like poetry to me.
I don’t know anything about gymnastics, but Nadia’s routine on the uneven bars seems extremelly difficult to me. Are today’s routines harder?
For the time, Nadia’s bar work was very difficult indeed. She was a pioneer. Since then, the bars have been moved further apart- so it’s harder to transition between the two. Vault (especially with the introduction of the vaulting table in place of the horse), beam, and floor have got much more difficult in terms of the acrobatic skills you need to be able to perform in order to be competitive. Sorry for the gym nerd ramble!
I’m just glad the these gymnasts look much better fed and nourished than those anorexic-looking little waifs who competed 20 years ago. They looked like they would break in half. These girls have some meat on their bones.
If you mean gymnastics is more fun with a lot of personality instead of just poise then sure. And again its all about the gymnast style. Kyla Ross? Had the poise and elegance of the old. Laurie Hernandez? Has the sparkle and personality of the new. Both ended up on the US team in 2012 & 2016 respectively. Neither is gone there’s just more room for girls like Laurie to make it to the big stage
This is a tough one for me because Maple is right but Kitten is damn sure on the right track with her intuitive statement as well.
Simone lacks the natural grace that some gymnasts have when it comes to floor exercises. It has nothing to do with her size or physique. Raisman moves like a ballerina no matter what passes she is doing. One of the girls from Brazil had a similar body type but came across as quite wooden in comparison.Another gymnast from China has a build similar to Simone’s but she is much more emotive and fluid on floor. These are just the facts as i saw them. simone is graceful on beam, in my opinion, and performs it like she had a completely different trainer or choreographer for some reason.The power and jaw-dropping perfection of her floor routine have earned her the gold and the world’s admiration but I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that she lacks the grace of the gymnasts of yesteryear.
I do, however, think it is very wrong to point this out without mentioning that 1) gymnastics as a whole, has changed and 2) almost all of the gymnasts today perform in a way that necessarily accentuates these differences, not just Simone. To not make these distinctions feels very suspicious to me. Are we really going to support even a whiff of the idea that Simone has singlehandedly stripped the beauty from gymnastics? Are we really going to even dance around the notion that some of these statements are *not* perpetuations of harmful tropes surrounding black female athletes? I just can’t.
For me, Aly doesn’t move particularly balletically at all- her artistry is normally the part of her gymnastics most criticised. If you watch her floor routine, she often misses musical cues and her toe point isn’t great. That being said, the acrobatics are insane. Mustafina has beautiful, beautiful carriage and extension, but hardly any choreography at all. I think Simone really performs to the crowd (though Laurie is my fave of them all- she’s such a firecracker! The Dutch women are also gorgeous movers). Different strokes for different folks I think. Many people seem to think that you can’t be artistic unless you’re a Soviet pixie. You’re absolutely right though- people involved in gymnastics have been saying that artistry is disappearing from the sport since at least the mid 90s and Simone is in no way emblematic of that. She’s incredible. There’s also been a little bit of increased chatter over whether or not dance is even necessary to gymnastics or if music should just be removed from the floor exercises altogether. The men don’t have it. I like it myself, but I think there’s some discussion to be had there.
Great commentary. I think it would be a mistake to do away with the music. It is not only a part of the artistry but enhances the athleticism of the athletes, imo. The music serves as a measured barometer of the gymnasts’ intuition, physical discipline, memory, syncopation, coordination, timing and control.
I agree. While I think Simone and all the women competing these days are amazing, I strongly prefer the gymnastics of the 80s and 90s esp the 88 and 92 quads…the “stereotypical” Soviet gymnast with the fantastic artistry and dance skills. Actually I like the less acrobatic gymnastics of the 50s-70s too, but the 80s and early 90s were for me the most exciting time for gymnastics. And many of those gymnasts were doing acrobatic skills that are still being done in elite competitions today.
While I admit that I enjoy some of the fluffier bits of women’s gymnastics, I think the shift in scoring is a long overdue address of a fundamental discrepancy between men and women’s gymnastics – the idea that one gender was allowed to be judged on pure athleticism while the other had to produce both remarkable physical feats and artistic grace, i.e. the idea that women had to LOOK good rather than just BE good at their endeavors. You could start demanding that men introduce some fluff into their routines, or you could erase the burden of that responsibility of women, and they chose the latter. Frankly, I think it was a healthier choice overall because it will discourage the kind of antics we saw from China in the Beijing Olympics (because how can a 20 year old look as lithe and flexible as a young girl?) and allow older competitors more potential to medal because of their experienced skill sets.
In unrelated news I am the same age as Zac; born on the 18th of October 1987, so we are exactly the same age. I feel like I should like him and be his #1 fan because I share a birthday with a celebrity, but he does nothing for me, he is just meh.
Anyway I think Simone is an amazing young lady and the Brazilian guy is cute.
I’m surprised that so many people think he’s attrative, to me just meh …. And he’s too short(I’m 5.10). The Brazilian guy is cute.
He’s handsome to me in a really generic way, almost like a cartoon character, you know? It’s almost like he walked out of an 80s anime and is still trying to expand into a fully three dimensional person.
I ship her with Arthur and wish they were a real couple.
As for Zac I’d hit and quit it so hard.
Maybe I’m feeling overly sensitive but why can these guys only be “pretend” boyfriends? The flirting is fun but it also implies that she’s somehow out of her league with them. It reminds me of high school when I became friendly with a guy in a class who was kind of step up in the social pecking order and he constantly reminded me of what a great friend/buddy/pal I was, clearly to signal that actual romance wasn’t ever going to be possibility because I wasn’t from the “right” crowd. Finally I was like “dude, stop, I get it.” Grr.
I don’t know much about the Brazilian gymanst, but SHE is way out of Zac’s league. If we’re doing that. And he’s too old for her too.
Well I think because Zac is in a serious long term relationship and considerably older then Simon and this other guy lives in Brazil so you know hard to have a real relationship.
This is why I think it’s pretend.
The other guy,Arthur Nory is gay.
You go, girl! Get yours.
This is sweet, and fun. I think it is nice to see how much fun some of these athletes are having.
Fake Brazilian BF FTW that is adorable ( even if I’m 3 for 3 Gorgeous but absolutely NUTF*CK Brazilian Dudes EL.Oh.El)
Nori is openly gay and has gone through a huge racism scandal against one of his team’s colleague. It was so serious he had to public apologize and got suspended for 30 days from training.
Well, that’s disappointing to hear. Sigh.
The “fainting” pic is adorable!
So adorbs. Never been a huge Zac fan (though openly admit his body is …,..sorry got lost in fun fantasy land for a sec) but this whole thing is just too sweet. And Simone? She. Is. AMAZING.
Okay, Simone is adorable… that’s all I got. And imo- now is the BEST time to be single- free to flirt, girl!
This is adorable.
I have a different opinion. They are using her for publicity and I can’t stand it! We should be celebrating her athletic accomplishments not fawning over guys fake fighting over her to get attention.
Her “Brazilian boyfriend” made several racist comments to one of his teammates last year in regards to the color of his skin, so this is about as cute as a rock for me.
Very cute… Although, it’s a little weird that Zac picks her up like a child lol
Olga Korbut is still my favorite gymnast, but the 2016 crew has my complete admiration. Their accomplishments were phenomenal.