Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Isn’t Competing in the Olympics to Be Remembered for Her Hair

She’s known as the “Pocket Rocket” because of her 5-foot-tall stance and power-packed race starts, but Jamaican track and field sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is gaining fame for something else this Olympics: her bolt of green and yellow hair. And she’s getting tired of it.

Considered by many industry insiders to be the greatest female sprinter ever, Fraser-Pryce has already captured two gold and two silver medals in the London and Beijing Olympics, and holds a staggering seven World Championship wins.

Yet coverage has focused on her hair since the start of the games — from declaring her winner of “best opening ceremony hair,” to athletic introductions that lead in with the color of her strands before mention of her speed. Other outlets, like CNN, have focused more on the pain of the 29-year-old runner’s toe injury than either her past resumé or future potential at these games.

After capturing the bronze medal in her signature 100-meter event Sunday in a well-fought showing against fellow countrywoman Elaine Thompson, Fraser-Pryce took to Facebook with a message that accompanied a smiling medal podium photo: “Because SFP [referring to herself] did not come this far to be remembered for her ‘ombre’ hair and injured toe, but for resilience and faithfulness. This bronze was the hardest to earn but like my gold and silver, it’s equally ‘Pryceless’ :)”

Why do female athletes get physically critiqued in a way that male athletes don’t seem to? It has a lot to do with what our culture thinks it means to be a woman, says Kjerstin Gruys, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University.

“When women become very successful in areas often associated with masculine traits, such as athletics or anything involving competition, you often seen intensified scrutiny on whether or not the woman is adequately feminine,” Gruys tells Yahoo Beauty. “You might say that successful women are held to an even higher standard of beauty as a way to make up for the traits that are viewed as masculine,” she adds.

The reduction of women of accomplishment to a focus on their changing hair styles isn’t new — but the way we respond to this kind of coverage is now changing, says Lauren Dawn, co-founder and executive director of Hillary Clinton PAC, Humanity for Hillary. Like Fraser-Pryce, Clinton has had her share of hairdo explications over the decades.

“That era is over, folks — women frankly are just simply not going to take this BS anymore — media need to learn that degrading a woman’s accomplishments by focusing on her looks is no longer acceptable,” Dawn tells Yahoo Beauty.

Rumored to be a multi-million-dollar business woman with investments in a hometown cafe, as well as the Pocket Rocket Foundation she created to provide academic scholarships to underprivileged Jamaican children (having overcome severe hardship herself), Fraser-Pryce, interestingly, also owns a local multi-ethnic hair salon — Chi Chi Hair Ja.

So how did the salon choose to negotiate the delicate balance of celebrating its Olympian owner’s extraordinary speed talents, along with the green and yellow hairstyle that she no doubt had done there? With a photo of Fraser-Pryce and the double entendre-inviting caption: “You are only confined by the walls you build yourself.”

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