Here was a 32-year-old woman who had already done so much: won state titles shortly after joining track in her teens, broke national collegiate records as an NCAA title-winning long jumper at Southern Miss. That’s what makes the news of Bowie’s death, which was announced on Wednesday, so utterly gut-wrenching. Who’d look more convincing in a silk track suit cradling a basketball, set against Manhattan’s night lights? You could see why the style arbiters at Valentino tapped the former high school hoops star for a spokesmodel.
So too could teens from her native Mississippi. Girls in Ghana could see themselves in her. In a sport where women of African descent dominate, Bowie, wrapped in the stars and stripes at her first-ever Olympics, literally planted a flag for Black women with darker complexions, showing how supremely comfortable they could be in their skin and confident in defining their own aesthetics.
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