Today, we look at how Simone Biles is redefining what toughness means, meet the women at the center of the South African liberation movement, and give you a shortlist of summer movies to check out.

Gone are the days of U.S. Olympic athletes performing through the pain of an injury in order to win accolades for their country. 

On Tuesday, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles earned the bronze medal for her performance in the balance beam final. With this win, Biles tied for the record for the most Olympic medals won by a U.S. gymnast. Her win came a week after she withdrew from a team final and several individual finals, citing mental health concerns. Specifically, she took herself out of those competitions after she performed an unexpected vault routine, during which she completed 1.5 twists in the air instead of her planned 2.5 twists. 

Biles later disclosed that she was suffering from a case of the “twisties,” a psychological phenomenon that causes gymnasts to lose control of their bodies midair, revealing just how close Biles might have been to injuring herself. 

Though right-wing commentators criticized Biles for prioritizing her mental health, calling her weak and a quitter, much of their vitriol was in response to the reaction that Biles received from fans and supporters back home. Overwhelmingly, the narrative around Biles’ decision to withdraw was positive, with commentators commending her for being honest about her struggles. 

It was a departure from past Olympic performances, like that of Kerri Strug at the 1996 Atlanta games. Strug was lauded for her self-sacrifice – landing a one-legged vault after injuring her ankle during her previous landing attempt. Strug won the U.S. gymnastics team the gold medal, but she was out for the rest of the Olympics and never competed again.

Biles’ openness was especially significant in a culture where Black athletes, particularly women, are expected to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their sport or for the “honor” of the fans they’re representing. She said she was inspired by Olympian and tennis player Naomi Osaka, who had opened up about her struggles with mental health and the press earlier this year and had withdrawn from the French Open and Wimbledon Championships as a result.

“It's OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are – rather than just battle through it,” Biles said when she withdrew from her team final. She later said that she didn’t withdraw because of an injury, but because she wanted to avoid one: “That’s why I took a step back, because I didn’t want to do something silly out there and get injured.” Toughness has a new face.

— Samantha Grasso (@samjgrasso)

✊ A different picture of the struggle

This piece originally appeared in Africa is A Country.

In April 2014 I found myself in the dining room of a family home in Diepkloof in the Soweto township. I was speaking to two middle-aged women about their experiences of the political uprisings that engulfed townships across South Africa during the final, turbulent decade of apartheid in the 1980s. 

As one woman laid down a tray of coffee and vetkoek, or fried dough, the other, Zanele, interjected, “You know, the petrol bomb is very powerful.” She proceeded to tell me about how, as a teenager and student, she herself had participated in the township uprisings by targeting white-owned businesses and bus companies with stones and petrol bombs. Listening to the recording of our interview later, the banal hums of domesticity – the stirring of teaspoons and clinking of cups – were a stark contrast to Zanele’s descriptions of burning vehicles, police birdshot and Casspirs rolling through Soweto’s streets.

In previous histories of South Africa’s liberation movement, the involvement of girls and young women like Zanele is all but missing. From the mid-1970s on, Black children, students and youth were the vanguards and shock troops of the anti-apartheid struggle. But these young activists have been depicted as a primarily male and deeply masculine group. As township politics grew increasingly confrontational and dangerous during the mid-1980s, girls and young women were thought to have been largely excluded from the struggle and increasingly confined to the home.

Yet from 2014 to 2016, I met and interviewed dozens of former comrades from Soweto, all of whom had given up their habitual lives as teenage girls to fight against apartheid by joining ANC-aligned student and youth organizations in the 1980s. 

Now middle-aged, these women were eager to share their past experiences, and their stories repudiated the idea that girls were absent or sidelined from political activism during these years. While they were far fewer in number than their male counterparts, these women still protested in the streets, confronted security forces with stones and petrol bombs, took on leadership roles in their communities, and were detained, interrogated and tortured by the apartheid state.

Their narratives placed them at the very center of the township uprisings and emphasized how, despite the stereotypes attached to their gender, they were willing to risk their lives for the struggle, just like the boys and young men in their communities. “Our heads were so hot, we didn’t want to be left at the back,” Zanele explained. If her male comrades ever discouraged her from participating in dangerous or physically demanding missions, she’d protest, “No, we are going there. Why must we stay behind? Because we were all fighting. If you throw a petrol bomb, I throw one too. If you mixed the petrol bomb there, I want to know, how did you mix it?”

In many ways, these women’s narratives conformed to archetypal images of the fearless, heroic, but at times over-zealous comrade inscribed in collective memories of South Africa’s liberation struggle. But because this image is so starkly masculine, the female comrades I interviewed were often more intent than men to clearly demonstrate their valor and proficiency as stalwarts of the liberation movement. Zanele spoke of how she was often the first and most eager among her group of comrades to chase after and discipline suspected police informers, and how she felt no fear when confronting security forces in township streets.

Yet in many other ways, the stories these women tell expand and complicate our current understandings of the liberation struggle, as they highlight issues often eclipsed or overlooked in men’s accounts. Zanele spoke of the struggles female comrades faced in trying to balance their identities as both daughters and activists. “It was a little bit difficult,” she sighed, explaining how she was forced to choose between attending political meetings and completing her household chores. “Maybe it was easy for men, but for us it was difficult because I got beaten everyday by my grandmother. If I didn’t finish [cooking or cleaning] … I was beaten.”

Once the police became aware of Zanele’s political activities, her home life was further complicated. Her grandparents forbid her to stay with them anymore, fearing she’d bring the police to their door. While Zanele at times expressed pride in rebelling against her domestic duties and parental pressures, she also spoke about the personal difficulties her politicization caused: “It was so painful, because I missed them. I want to see them, you know? I want to change my clothes. But I wasn’t allowed … it wasn’t safe for me to go home.”

These women’s stories tell us about how activism was lived on a day-to-day basis, and the struggles it brought to young people’s private and family lives – topics rarely explored in current histories, which tend to prefer comrades’ more public identities and activities.

Zanele’s narrative was punctuated with the full spectrum of human emotion. She spoke candidly about how angry police informers made her (“I hate those people,” she repeatedly stated). She laughed when discussing how she and her friend would enforce the consumer boycott, demonstrating the thrill such confrontations brought. But she also expressed remorse for disappointing her grandparents, for attacking bus drivers during a bus boycott and for destroying the groceries of those caught shopping at white-owned stores. 

Her narrative was at times contradictory and ambivalent – she would long for her days as a young activist and the excitement it brought, while also lamenting just how difficult those years were and the high price she paid for her political involvement.

These oral histories offer us a different picture of the struggle than those usually told by men: one that is messy, non-linear and startlingly candid. It is no rosy, unequivocal celebration of a war won. It is an introspective tale of what it meant to be a young woman against apartheid, both at the time of the liberation struggle and in the three decades since.

— Emily Bridger (@EJBridger) 

You can find Bridger’s new book, Young Women Against Apartheid, here.

📺 A sprinkling of summer films

A great summer film is a little indulgent and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Maybe you watch it to cool off from a bad vacation or a semi-broken heart, to get in the mood to go out again. During winter there was little to do with our free time but watch movies. In the summertime, they’re just part of the scene. I want to turn something on that I don’t have to pause when I go into the other room to prep dinner for my friends or hunt a mosquito with a pair of flip flops. A good summer movie is like a good horoscope: low-key fun. You can skim it, roll your eyes at it, take pleasure in it, move on.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) — directed by Otto Preminger  

A sun-soaked tribute to the fall of innocence set on the splashy French Riviera. It stars Jean Seberg two years before Godard’s Breathless as Cécile, a bored, conspiring daddy’s girl on an extended holiday with her philandering father and his frivolous girlfriend. Then he gets a new girlfriend (Deborah Kerr) who isn’t so frivolous. Chafing under this new matriarch’s imposition of order, Cécile plots to be rid of her. She is not bored for much longer.

On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) — directed by Hong Sang-soo

Indisputably a beach movie, it’s in the title (which is lifted from a Whitman poem, but I’ll allow it). The camera follows the protagonist, a beautiful young actress recovering from a thwarted affair with her former director. She takes moody meanders through the parks and cafes of Hamburg, Germany, and drinks with friends in Gangneung, South Korea. To call it a moody “autofictional” portrayal of adultery’s aftereffects wouldn’t be far off the mark. I recall at least one scene in which the actress takes a tragic power nap on a beach.

Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979) — directed by John Sayles

In John Sayles’ first feature film, a group of lefty friends who were once jailed together en route to a Vietnam War protest reunite a decade later at a house in New Hampshire with not nearly enough beds. Hookups commence in motel rooms and on living room floors, and hang-ups about the future are shared freely. An ode to the summer of love from the precipice of turning 30.

Losing Ground (1982) — directed by Kathleen Collins

I tried and failed to think of a great summer movie that doesn’t revolve around emotional affairs and sexual betrayal. But this one is more curious about what an affair can produce – ideas, art, creativity. There are no easy answers here, just a careful, joyous eye on Sara Rogers (Seret Scott), a beloved philosophy professor at a university in New York, whose husband, a painter (Bill Gunn), rents a summer workspace that he keeps mostly to himself. There he becomes inspired by one of his models, inspiring jealousy in his wife, who is very much his match. It promises to be a very productive summer for them both.

Splash (1984) — directed by Ron Howard

Did you know that in the ’80s you could take a taxi from Manhattan to Cape Cod? All you needed was a thick wad of cash and to be Tom Hanks in a Ron Howard movie, moving inexorably closer to a star-crossed date with a beautiful mermaid (Daryl Hannah). This is the world of Splash. Perhaps you watched it when you were a child? Either way, now is the time to enjoy this heartfelt story of a fruit and vegetable purveyor who thought he could not fall in love but just hadn’t met the right woman yet. And that woman was also a fish.

— Hannah Gold (@togglecoat)

El Salvador will begin accepting Bitcoin for … everything. [Financial Times]

Cori Bush slept on the Capitol steps to protest the end of eviction moratoriums. [Teen Vogue]

A Belarusian sprinter gets asylum. [The Cut]

Brazil’s Black and LGBTQ movements have a new face in Erica Malunguinho. [The Nation]

Legendary critic Greil Marcus on this month’s top 10 listens. [LA Review of Books]

Roller-skating into that hot August haze like… [YouTube]

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