The Hope of France

Brian Joubert is not an athlete whose name, let alone back story, would be very familiar to most Americans. After all, he competes under the red, white and blue of France--and not the U. S. of A. Yet he is an amazing athlete, and a person worth knowing. As a child, he had a kidney removed due to illness before he reached his first birthday. As a young man he has risen to the status of world champion in the sport of figure skating.

Wikipedia records his accomplishments thusly: "He is the 2007 World Champion, a three-time (2004, 2007 & 2009) European champion, a six-time (2003-2008) French National champion, and the 2006 Grand Prix champion. As of November 2009, Joubert is ranked third in the world.

And he is a model for companies like Izod. As a European, he needn't fret that a photo of his beautiful body in underware or less would in anyway impede his ambition to represent a nation in sports. And why should he?

Perhaps it's all those statues of classical men and women in marble that lead our European cousins to view the human body as a thing of beauty. To acknowledge it's form and functions without prudish distain. But one wonders really just why Americans allow a fringe of our society to still shame the majority of the rest of us into allowing the platonic appreciation of physiques to feel seemly and untoward. I for one look forward to the Vancouver winter Olympics, and I will be cheering this beautiful young man on as he strives to win the gold: a man who is beautiful for his response to life's capricious disadvantageous snafus and his body and it's physical abilities. Vive le Brian Joubert!