The question of Raygun at the Olympics is largely one of gender dynamics in the development of breaking as a sport
I started breaking in 2008, long before anyone could have predicted anything about Raygun or Olympic memes. Back then, there were no b-girl battles for one simple reason – there weren’t enough b-girls.
Breaking was and is a predominantly male community, based around, among other things, head-to-head confrontation and intense, athletic feats of strength. It was understood that b-girls simply did not have the physical capabilities to perform the same demanding moves as their male counterparts.
Sure, there were some iconic b-girls throughout the years, like Baby Love from Rock Steady Crew. But b-girls were always something of a “token,” the one girl in the boys’ club. In fact, it was common for a breaking crew to include one woman or one child as a gimmick.
One thing was taken as a given: women were not good at breakdancing…
…how long was that supposed to last?
Women in Breaking: “Safe Spaces,” Then and Now
Today, all of that is changing, as one can see when watching any of the Olympic women’s breaking medalists. For the first time in history, there are enough women to constitute high-level competition, who are able to pull off these moves — and the ceiling is rising every day.
So, what happened with Raygun?
Around 15 years ago, b-girl battle divisions started appearing and gaining popularity.
The skill level among women at the time was generally very low. B-girls became known for doing “inverts,” a relatively basic freeze that relies on flexibility, while advanced powermoves were out of the question.
Media professional and hip hop analyst George Zhi Zhao described the atmosphere in some b-girl battles as a “safe space.”
“B-girl communities are generally viewed as safe spaces for women within an intimidating, largely male-dominated sport, and b-girls often receive a high level of support / encouragement within the community, moreso than b-boys,” he wrote on Threads.
“This is the mindset Raygun brought into the Olympics. However, this ‘safe space’ doesn’t translate well into an event like the Olympics, where the audience is highly critical, especially with breaking under scrutiny as a first-time Olympic sport.”
Is Raygun Actually Bad?
The problem was exacerbated by audiences who had never seen a full breaking battle, and whose few reference points in understanding the dance come from ‘80s movies and energy drink advertisements.
These audiences did not realize that high-level athletics in women’s breaking is a relatively new development, or that serious b-girls are scarce, especially in remote, disconnected places like Australia. Instead, they wanted to see the headspin from the energy drink commercial.
Before I continue, let me just acknowledge one thing: Raygun’s performance at the Olympics was not good. It was bad. It was very bad.
However, this alone is not remarkable. There are terrible performances at the Olympics all the time – there are high-divers who belly flop, and marathon runners who finish with a time worse than an average marathon runner, but receive standing ovations. There was Elizabeth Swaney, an untalented American skier who maneuvered her way into representing Hungary via technicalities.
Now, here’s something that will really confuse you: Raygun would probably win the championship b-girl battle at the local breaking jam in your city.
Seriously?
Yes. Raygun may be far below the Olympic level of the other talented competitors, but she’s still ahead of the skill level of most b-girls worldwide. And while spinning on one’s head will impress laypeople, it won’t impress judges who have seen it thousands of times before.
If anything, I hope that young girls around the world will find some kind of weird, backwards inspiration in this. While more b-girl heroes finally appearing, the overall level is still so low, the scene is still so new – it can be yours for the taking.
Why Does Everyone Hate Raygun?
One reason is that in breaking, the stakes are just higher when it comes to failing. You’re supposed to invent your own moves, and then look undeniably cool doing them. This is already very subjective and tough, so it means more when one falls short — it’s not just an athletic failure, it’s a stylistic one.
Here’s the inspiring Sunny, US Olympic b-girl who would kick my ass if we ever had to battle. I hope she’d forgive me for this brazen clickbait.
Another reason is that people don’t understand the breaking scene. They don’t understand how diverse it is, and they don’t understand how new it is. If that’s what Australia had, then so be it. All nations cannot excel at all sports.
(Yeah, yeah, we all know that Holy Molly would have been a better choice in hindsight, but realistically she and Raygun are still around the same skill level.)
It’s been strange to witness the conspiratorial vitriol that has emerged around Raygun. People who have only seen 20 cumulative seconds of TikTok footage have decisively proclaimed that Raygun is an agent sent by white academia to unravel the threads of hip hop culture from the inside.
They say she colluded with her husband to cheat her way into the Olympics and steal the spot from more deserving dancers.
They say she hates breaking and wanted to destroy it in mockery.
I have another theory to offer: she’s a 36-year-old woman trying to live her best life, who got in over her head.
While it may be true that she was involved in the Olympic selection process, who else was supposed to do it instead? Breaking is still such a small scene, it’s normal for competition judges to decide the victories or losses of their own crewmates. That won’t change until the community grows in size.
But to outsiders who can only stomach one Instagram comment of information at a time, it’s apparently a certainty that Raygun cheated her way into the Olympics for personal gain.
(The personal gain that would come from a worldwide self-image nightmare, I cannot say.)
So on that note, here’s the TL;DR:
Women breakers, for a long time, generally fell short of men. Today, that’s beginning to change. Raygun unfortunately got caught in between several worlds: high-level b-girls vs. low-level ones, local community battles vs. the Olympic stage, whiteness vs. “realness”, and the perception of women’s breaking vs. men’s.
And all this in front of a world that doesn’t understand the culture or history of breaking.
I’ve come around to the conclusion that this whole Raygun thing is good for the art/sport. This is the most mainstream attention breaking has received in my lifetime, and while it’s not all positive, this is how information travels these days – through memes, jokes, and usually, a lot of division. It’s the same school of thought propelling this clickbait headline (obviously it’s untrue that women “have never been good” at breaking; like many fields, there are just far fewer of them, playing a game that was invented by men).
I feel bad that Raygun had to be a martyr, but what’s done is done. Congratulations to the incredible b-girls who made history by earning the first Olympic breaking medals: Japan’s Ami, Lithuania’s Nicka, and China’s 671.