A Salute to Ice Dancing, Institutionalized Face-Sitting on Skates

There are many sports in the Winter Olympics, all with varying levels of sex appeal. Cross country skiing is on the lower end of the spectrum, while luge (lube…) is all the way at the top. But there is only one that makes me weep from three holes, and that’s ice dancing.

On Sunday evening, Americans who tuned into NBC’s broadcast of the Events at Pyeongchang were treated to a buffet of drama served to you in flamboyantly be-studded lycra atop four gleaming skates. And my loins were awakened for spring as I, and my fellow Americans, discovered our new sexual orientation, which is specifically having an athlete thrust me into the air via my crotch pocket, while a mis-ordered “El Tango De Roxanne/Come What May” mash-up plays.

Halt, before you ask—ice dancing is not figure skating, according to 2018 Olympic ice dancer Evan Bates—it’s something far sluttier. “We’re really more like ballroom dancers,” he said. “We’re interpreting music, putting a lot of emphasis on the connection between the couple and on the connection to the music.”

Ice dancers are not judged by the height of their flips or the speed of their spins like their figure skating counterparts; instead, they’re judged by “how they move together as one,” in other words, do you ice fuck good.

Take, for instance, the gold medal winners of the ice fucklympics—the “not dating” Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who performed such a sensual routine to some Moulin Rouge classics that it included an actual face sit.

But if it’s the sexiest of sport, what, then, do we do about the Shib-sibs—Maia and Alex Shibutani, the American silver medal winners and vlogging sibling duo? How am I to parse my feelings for Virtue/Moir and Shibutani/Shibutani?

Moreover, how are we to regard the Shib-sibs in such a sexually-resonant sport? Are they the wholesome, non-sensuality fueled alternative to Virtue/Moir, produced for and by Christian America? Will they ever win gold without the secret spice of the ice-dancing duo (sex)? Can I just relax about it and respect world-class athletes without having something smart-assy to say about it? But weren’t you thinking it too?

But the Shibs are just a small logistical moral hiccup in an otherwise unexpectedly exciting evening of ice play. I guess this is my community now.