I, Tonya. The Outsider Finally Gets Her Rewards.

After finally seeing I, Tonya this weekend, I finally realized why I always liked Tonya Harding, now Tonya Price.

She is a figure who appeals to everyone who has been an outsider, who had a rough edge, who received a bad break.

In many ways she represents the reasons why people are afraid to try. Dream pursuit is not easy, and despite the belief that if we just try hard enough we’ll make it, there are often outside factors or choices we make due to our own naivety that not only have us failing to achieve our goal, but get burned along the way.

Such is the case of Tonya Harding told in I, Tonya.

In doing so, it makes her out to be, yes, something of a sympathetic figure, but also one of greatness.

The Outsider. We’ve all been it at one point of time or another.

When it came out that Nancy Kerrigan had been the victim of an attack designed to prevent her from going to the Olympics and Tonya might be a suspect, Kerringan’s mother Brenda told reporters it would be nicer if Harding would not compete in the Olympics from the window of her car.

It was a statement made before the facts were in, a judgmental comment reeking of “Tonya doesn’t belong.”

And so Harding became the subject of national ridicule. It’s always easy to pick on The Outsider. After all, she’s different.