“She’s talented, yes, but she’s curvy or people would tell me that I ‘look like a man’ or you shouldn’t be here or you don’t deserve to be in the sport.” Jordan Chiles had taken on all verbal beatings before. She was body shamed quite frequently in her growing years as a gymnast. She received constant checks on her weight, and many people asked her to eat a certain amount. And these experiences would have naturally scarred her mind. But there was one time that topped it all.

When Jordan Chiles reached level 10, she was just 10 years old. Whereas the other gymnasts alongside were older, in their teens. Feeling jittery, she already had apprehensions, and Coach X, her former gymnastics coach, didn’t make it any better. She continued her digs about her hair. She tried cornrows, but Coach X despised them and commented derogatorily about them multiple times a day.

After all, Chiles’ thick curly hair didn’t match the other gymnasts’ slick back bun. And, well, this comparison continued with their bodies, too. Sad, isn’t it?

In her memoir, “I’m That Girl,” Jordan Chiles narrates how Coach X wanted Chiles’s shape to change unrealistically. The gymnast mentions how Coach X’s idea of a good gymnast’s looks involved looking slender, petite, and less muscular. However, Chiles, who had always admired Shawn Johnson, had a very muscular build.

Even without lifting weights, Chiles had a very built look, so much that Gina Chiles once told her, “she could sneeze and grow muscles.”Historically, gymnastics routines by slender gymnasts have been awarded higher scores, and Jordan Chiles and Coach X wanted the same for her. But her method? It did not sit well with Chiles.

“At practices she constantly called me ‘bubble b—.'” Per Chiles, Coach X would say, “Tuck in that bubble b— and open up those hips, so you’ll look more graceful.” Also, even though Chiles had 0 percent body fat, Coach X insisted she lost weight. “You look like a donut,” her poking would continue. Blood boils at times when you read something like that!

And Chiles was so affected by it that she wrote, “ I started hating my obliques [muscles] so much- sometimes I still do, if I’m honest, that once I asked a doctor if they could be removed or shaved down.”

Yes. Imagine how a junior gymnast would have navigated her way through such a tough time.

Even later in her career, Chiles had to face racist comments, criticism about her weight, and a lot more. But the gymnast with 2 Olympic medals through the years has proved she leaves it all when she’s on the mat. And 2025 is a testament to what a skilled gymnast she is.

On March 2, she won her fifth Big Ten Gymnast of the Week award this season. Also, this year, she has totaled 14 individual victories, the highest for UCLA. But speaking of her childhood, and even now, Jordan Chiles has always had her mother as a rock, supporting her through it all.

How Jordan Chiles’ mother once protected her from Coach X’s abuse

In her novel, Jordan Chiles revealed that Coach X had a drinking problem. The coach once called Gina Chiles from Portland and requested, “I need help, I need help.” Gina went to pick her up in her car, only to find that Coach X was drunk. It’s shocking. It truly is!

It was Gina who talked to her and asked her, “Okay, well are you ready to fix it? Because the coaching doesn’t even matter at this point. Your life does. You need to get your life together.” Through it all, it was Jordan who was paying the price of her coach’s recklessness, and although Gina was there to support her daughter through it all, she couldn’t have fathomed the entirety of the trauma Jordan Chiles was going through, because the young gymnast tried keeping things hidden from her parents.

“My parents could see I was under a lot of pressure. But I didn’t tell them the full extent of Coach X’s extreme behavior,” said a confused Chiles. Perhaps it was an effort by Chiles to save her parents from the hurt of seeing their daughter distressed to such an extent.

But the abuse and struggle she faced are out in the open now. In a remarkable act of courage, Chiles’ memoir explores the darkest secrets of her past. When one reads it, they realize all that this young gymnast had to put up with to rise to the levels she did. Makes you admire her all the more!