wasn’t showing it."

This strange standard that Douglas has been held to and expected to apologize for — from her appearance to her behavior to the behavior that people project upon her — is something that Phelps and athletes like him (white, successful) don’t face. As is the case with Phelps, his anger was even celebrated when "Phelps face" became a meme and he wagged his finger at rival Chad le Clos.

Natalie Hawkins, Douglas’s mother, addressed Douglas’s haters in an interview with Reuters.

"She's [Douglas] had to deal with people criticizing her hair, or people accusing her of bleaching her skin," Hawkins said. "They said she had breast enhancements, they said she wasn't smiling enough, she's unpatriotic. Then it went to not supporting your teammates."

Some of the petty criticism couldWilliams

One major difference between 2016 and 2012 is that Douglas isn’t the only black American female gymnast who’s winning.

With Simone Biles’s win in the OIympic gymnastics individual all-around, it marks the first time that two black women have won the event — considered the most prestigious title in gymnastics — in a row. It’s just like Biles’s World Championship win in 2013, which followed Douglas’s Olympic win — the first time two black women won back-to-back all-arounds in the Olympics and World Championships.

Gymnastics right now isn’t unlike tennis when the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, first came on the scene in the late '90s. The Williams sisters’ success was met with outright attacks (see: Indian Wells), and their behavior was constantly scrutinized. They were considered too cocky (tennis