You women and your ovaries get all the breaks. Not only do you get all the plum jobs, higher salaries, and easy YouTube views, but you also get to do synchronized swimming in the Olympics, unlike Kenyon Smith.
Male synchronized swimmers attract attention not just because they’re men dressed in the aquatic version of figure-skating costumes but because their sexuality is constantly in question. Of course, some are gay, like the eight guys who make up Tsunami Tsynchro, a team in San Francisco. These men, whose day jobs range from architect to aerospace engineer, say they’re not bothered by the perception. “We’re willing to let people think what they want about the sexual-orientation part of it,” says Dan Stevens, a 42-year-old public-relations-firm owner and Tsunami Tsynchro member, “but it’s fighting words when people say men don’t belong in the sport.”
Smith, who is the only male competing today and the only one on his team, the Aquamaids, from Santa Clara, California, takes the stereotyping a little harder. In middle school he was mocked so much for being a synchronized swimmer that he wanted to quit. “A lot of people thought I was gay,” he says.
He isn’t—although he’s never dated a teammate, he admits to liking some of them. And some of them have liked him too. “I’ve had to break some hearts, unfortunately,” he says. (Some of the girls asked his sister and fellow Aquamaid Layla for help getting Smith to go out with them. “I stay out of all that drama,” she says.) He’s come up with a retort for guys who think the fact that he can do an elegant underwater pirouette makes him gay. “I’m the one who gets to hang out with a group of girls in bikinis every day,” he says.
Wow, what a clever retort. You know who else gets to hang out with half-naked women all day? Stylists, photographers, fashion designers, nurses, women’s rights activists, and priests. So clearly proximity to women is always directly correlated with heterosexuality. Then again, they also don’t have to pick out a one-piece and tassels with the women they work with, so maybe that is an extra bit of manliness for you to hang your hat on.
In related news, if this guy is pulling more tail than I am, I may need to reevaluate my life. In the form of a shotgun blast.
But despite finishing second in the solo competition at the 2007 national championships, and unlike the girls with whom he spends six hours wearing nose clips every day, Smith isn’t eligible for a synchro scholarship. And no matter how far he manages to rocket out of the water or how expressive he is during the chlorine-soaked ballets, unless the rules change he’ll never represent his country at the Olympics. The highest levels of the sport are closed to guys.
But despite finishing second in the solo competition at the 2007 national championships, and unlike the girls with whom he spends six hours wearing nose clips every day, Smith isn’t eligible for a synchro scholarship. And no matter how far he manages to rocket out of the water or how expressive he is during the chlorine-soaked ballets, unless the rules change he’ll never represent his country at the Olympics. The highest levels of the sport are closed to guys.
I say let the little fruit compete. Though the culmination of the article has Smith losing to a girl from Stanford (Sara Lowe, who ironically seems to be much burlier than Smith), he seems perfectly capable of traipsing around a pool, dancing about in the water, and making countless competitors from other countries extremely uncomfortable. And frankly, isn’t that the American way?
), but a work visa. And his dozens and dozens of fans will be heartbroken to know that 
