When Simone Biles stepped onto the podium to accept her gold medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she’d been upside down at least two dozen times – and her hair, somehow, was unfazed. Not only did she land countless flips and twists, but she managed to do so while looking amazing under a high-stress, high-pressure, fast-paced environment. The secret to this heroic feat, according to Biles’s longtime stylist Jazmine Johnson, isn’t a high-hold hairspray or gel – it’s the fact that she has healthy hair to work with.
Biles’s hair has been talked about almost as much as her achievements in the gym – primarily because it’s been a target for social media trolls since she stepped into the spotlight at the Rio Olympics in 2016. “People hate my hair for meet days – ‘her hair’s all over the place, look at it, it’s crazy,'” she says in her new documentary, “Simone Biles Rising.” On the same day, she took home a gold medal in the Women’s Gymnastics Team Final, she was bullied online because her hair looked frizzy – something she attributed to a “9,000-degree” bus ride with no AC. “Next time you want to comment on a Black girl’s hair. JUST DON’T,” she said on her Instagram Stories.
This type of commentary is problematic in any setting, but it’s especially ridiculous when it’s being hurled at someone whose hairstyles are – for good reason – far more focused on function than fashion. As you can imagine, an Olympic gymnast’s hair has to perform just as well as the athlete herself. It’s typically twisted into tight hairstyles, secured with rubber bands, and sprayed with the closest thing to glue you can find in the hair-care aisle. “They can’t have any distractions in their face,” Johnson tells PS. “That’s why it’s so important to keep your hair healthy and on a strict routine – because it behaves better on the mat.”
It’s no surprise, then, that K18 – a brand that’s best known (and widely beloved) for its hair-repairing protein treatment – recently announced Biles as its latest ambassador. Johnson depends on the K18 Leave-In Hair Mask ($75) and Repair Hair Oil ($65), which infuse strands with protein to repair damage from the inside out, for keeping Biles’s hair healthy enough to stand up to a triple-double. “As Black women, we definitely deal with frizz and breakage,” says Johnson. “We’re doing braids and buns and things like that, and the hair is going to go through a little trauma. But as long as she’s doing her healthy hair routine, we can do whatever. We can do different styles, and her hair won’t break as much or snap when we put it into a ponytail with different elastics.”
You may have noticed some of those different styles showing up at the 2024 Olympics. “[Simone’s] in this new phase where she doesn’t just want to wear a bun,” says Johnson. “She has this new look where she wants to wear a half bun, which makes sense because it keeps the bun secure but takes off some of the pressure off the scalp. Braids at the crown are another one of the tricks we use because it takes the hair off of the face and equals out some of the pressure.”
Because Johnson isn’t joining Biles in Paris (the team isn’t allowed to travel with hair and makeup), the gymnast is responsible for styling her own hair on the mat, which makes starting with a good foundation even more important. “If [her har] is healthy and strong, I can execute my part, and she can feel good on the mat,” says the stylist. “The healthier the hair is, the better she can perform.”
Zoë Weiner is a freelance beauty and wellness writer. Her work has appeared in Bustle, Byrdie, Cosmopolitan, PS, GQ, Glamour, Marie Claire, Allure, Self, Brides, and Teen Vogue, among others, and she was the senior beauty editor at Well+Good.
