The figure skating and ‘Dancing With the Stars’ champion talks about writing his memoir, being a role model and coming out
The title of former Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon’s memoir, “Beautiful on the Outside,” is a play on the old adage that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. This is not the case in competitive skating, and he often hid his impoverished reality behind the façade of his pretty face.
Rippon recently graced the Music Box Theater stage in Chicago to discuss his memoir. The conversation centered on his sexuality and being a role model, and what the book meant to him.
Now retired, Rippon earned a number of achievements as a figure skater. He won the 2010 Four Continents Championships, the 2016 U.S. National Championships and was part of the U.S. team that won a bronze medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. That same year, he won NBC's “Dancing With the Stars.”
By writing a personal account of his life, Rippon wanted to describe what he had learned throughout his career.
“It was a way to process everything I’ve gone through,” Rippon told the crowd who had gathered to hear him talk. “I wanted to share the lessons and things that I’ve learned.”
There are many lessons and stories to be discovered in “Beautiful on the Outside,” particularly in relation to Rippon’s journey of self-discovery and his process of overcoming hardships. There was a time when Rippon was food-insecure at the same time as participating in his regular training regimen.
“I had just enough to pay for my ice, my phone, my car, and my gym membership — with an unlimited supply of green apples,” Rippon wrote in the book. “If I went out to dinner once or had an unexpected expense, it was all over.”
In the book, Rippon wrote about how he had to train and take lessons while money from competitions was his only source of income. While most of his money came from what he won at competitions, it went right back into his expenses for figure skating. The only way he could be financially independent without cutting time from his training was to go hungry.
For most of his life, Rippon’s mother was responsible for funding his skating. However, the pair lived far apart for some time so that Rippon could train, and, because he was 22, he wanted to be on his own.
“I wanted independence from my mom,” he wrote. “It didn’t go down the way I wanted it to, but now I (had) got it. All of this started because I wanted to prove to myself that I was an adult and that I was strong. I never meant to hurt my mom, but it was hurting me more to feel like my skating was ruining my family’s life.”
Throughout his struggles with money, Rippon had many different methods of obtaining food. He had to take advantage of the resources around him.
“The resort (where I was training) had free green apples and TAZO tea in the lobby, and I would stuff as many into my backpack as I possibly could,” Rippon revealed in his memoir. “And that is what I ate for weeks because the only thing I could afford was anything free.”
Although most of the book is written in Rippon’s signature tone, which is charming and has an unapologetic sense of humor, he does not, in any way, undermine the struggles that he went through earlier in life. Along with food insecurity, there was another major issue that Rippon was dealing with at the time: his sexuality. Rippon details his struggles in his book, and he took pains to ensure that he did so without sugarcoating any significant details.
“I wanted to make sure that LGBT+ youth heard my story loud and clear,” Rippon responded, when asked about the book’s discussion of his sexuality at the event in Chicago. “There were moments when I had nothing and moments where I had nothing to lose.”
In the memoir, Rippon highlights both the hardships and the unique experiences that he had while growing up and discovering that he was gay. One of the details he draws particular attention to is his coming-out process.
“The one thing I didn’t want to be was gay,” Rippon wrote. “My family was always accepting of gay people, I knew gay people growing up, and I certainly worked with some in figure skating. But I always thought, ‘That’s not me. It just can’t be me. I can’t be this thing that people made fun of me for when I was little. I can’t be this thing I know isn’t accepted in my area.’”
Rippon mentioned that although a lot of these dark thoughts were in his head, nothing bad happened to him when he came out.
“Even when the hate isn’t directed explicitly towards you, you can feel it in the air,” Rippon wrote. “Like some corrosive mist you can’t wash off.”
As Rippon discussed experiences he wrote about in the memoir, he said that above all, he wants to be the role model for others that he always wanted to have when he was growing up.
“I wish that somebody had spoken up,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I always spoke up … I tried to say the things I wish somebody had said to me when I was younger. It’s the way I try to act every day of my life.”
Courtesy of StreetWise / INSP.ngo
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