16-year-old Morgan Hurd has just shattered a glass ceiling by winning the gymnastics world championship title– with her glasses on.
The Harry Potter-loving teen has been watching the competition on TV since she was a child, and didn’t think twice when she decided to wear her glasses while working to become a gymnast.
“I tried contacts,” she explained, “but they made my eyeballs dry, and when I got stuff in my eyes, I had to take them out and put them back in.”
So she wore her glasses, it was as simple as that. She had them fitted with a neoprene strap to prevent slippage, and thus became one of the very first gymnasts to compete internationally with her spectacles on her nose.
Keah Brown, an activist and writer who founded the #DisabledAndCute movement, said “By performing in her glasses, Morgan is simply saying, ‘This is what I look like, and I’m still an athlete regardless.’ To see somebody who looks more like you doing something so extraordinary will make the person watching feel like anything is possible.”
Many others share this sentiment. Josh Levin of Slate wrote in support of Hurd as well, saying: “Those of us in the legion of four-eyed Americans can sometimes feel as is athletic prowess is a blurry, far-away thing. I now see that if I squint hard enough, I too can be the world gymnastics champion. Thank you, Morgan Hurd.”