Simone Biles is the best gymnast of all-time, and she shouldn’t have to shrink from her greatness.

Biles walked away from the 2016 Olympics with four gold medals and in the years since has only been on the rise. After winning the World Championship this year, she officially became the most decorated female gymnast in history. She’s also had three news skills named after her in the past year, including the astonishing triple-double.

With a track record like this, it’s no wonder why Biles projects confidence, but typically, our society doesn’t like to let female athletes celebrate themselves and their accomplishments.

“I’ve won five world titles and if I say, ‘I’m the best gymnast there is,’ (the reaction is) ‘Oh, she’s cocky. Look at her now.’ No, the facts are literally on the paper,” Biles said. “It’s important to teach our female youth that it’s OK to say, ‘Yes, I am good at this,’ and you don’t hold back. You only see the men doing it. And they’re praised for it and the women are looked down upon for it.”

This societal attitude was also prevalent during the women’s World Cup when the US national team received backlash for their “insufferable smuggery.” Critics came at the team for how they reacted to their 13-0 win over Thailand, but isn’t that similar to the St. Thomas football team steamrolling their opponents?

Co-captain Megan Rapinoe earned two awards from the tournament: Golden Ball for best player and Golden Boot for top scorer. Yet, she’s been called arrogant for celebrating her accomplishments. She hasn’t done anything that male athletes haven’t done, so why does she receive the criticism?

Women are expected to be humble and gracious, but men can openly trash talk their opponents, write poems about how great they are, and claim to be sent by God to show people how to play a sport.

The double standard is something every female athlete experiences, even one as highly regarded as Serena Williams.

Let’s throw it back to ten years ago for a second. At the end of 2009, three news events dominated the world of sports: Tiger Woods’ mistresses, Thierry Henry’s illegal ball-handling in the FIFA World Cup, and Serena Williams’ verbal attack on a line judge who’d called her for a foot fault.

One of these things is not like the other.

The situations involving Woods and Henry were scandals, worthy of the international attention they received. But a squabble between Williams and a line judge should not be headline-worthy news.

Fast forward to last year.

Williams walked away from the US Open final with a loss and $17,000 in fines. The fines came from the three violations issued to her from umpire Carlos Ramos. First, she received a code violation warning for receiving coaching during the match. Next, he gave her a point penalty for smashing her racket. She confronted him and received a game penalty for verbal abuse after saying, “You stole a point from me and you are a thief.”

Male players like John McEnroe and Andy Roddick were notorious for on-court temper tantrums. But Andy Roddick never received a game penalty, even though he admitted to saying worse things, and John McEnroe was only disqualified from the Australian Open after glaring at a line judge, smashed his racket twice, and swore at the umpire to the point that intervention was required.

These two players were guilty of outbursts match after match, and people soaked it up. Williams has a similar reaction one time and she gets backlash.

It’s the same across the board. In any sport, fans love arrogant male athletes. Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Larry Bird―the list goes on. They’re all guilty of the inflated egos that come with being good at what you do. In itself, that’s not a bad thing. Professional athletes need to have some swagger, but when we condemn women for the things men do on a regular basis, we have a problem.

Society is slowly waking up from the idea that women must be humble, soft and gracious at all times. Simone Biles has more than proven herself as an athlete, and by embracing her greatness, she is paving the way for future female competitors to do the same without criticism.

Biles, Serena Williams and the US women’s national team are all working to break the double standard. These women are phenomenal athletes; they deserve to celebrate that.

Kayla Mayer can be reached at maye8518@stthomas.edu.