Despite swimming, dancing, and showing off gymnastics moves underwater, Team USA’s artistic swimmers make getting glammed a priority. While competing at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris this summer, the group flaunted flawless beats.
Anita Alvarez, a 3-time Olympian—who first competed at the games in Rio in 2016—revealed that rocking makeup in the pool is more important than one might think. “It completes the look,” Alvarez says. “Although it is a very physically demanding sport, it is also an artistic sport where we have to be performers/entertainers as well. Just as we wear our decorated suits and have our hair done up nicely, we also put on makeup. It emphasizes our facial expressions while we swim—which is part of our artistic impression score. Aside from that, it makes us feel fierce and bold.”
Maintaining makeup underwater is no easy feat—especially since the athletes have to keep their eyes open and are not allowed to wear goggles. “Some pools’ chlorine is stronger than others, but we always keep eye drops in our bags,” Alvarez shares. When it comes to cosmetic products, Alvarez and her teammates make sure to choose only waterproof items so that they don’t have to “reapply or do touch ups after hours of warmups.”
This year, Team USA’s artistic swimmers rocked the Athletic Cosmetic Company’s G.O.A.T. Mascara, which is packed with hyaluronic acid and synthetic beeswax, which acts as a binding agent and can help products stay on by making it waterproof. The swimmers also donned heavy black eyeliner and their signature “divine wine” red lip. “All eight of us have very different facial features, so we found that the best way for all of us to feel confident in the makeup is to have a black eyeliner look that can be shaped for each of our individual faces yet still look like a united team.”
The Athletic Cosmetic Company G.O.A.T. Mascara
Done-up faces aren’t the only pre-performance rituals Team USA swears by. Before competitions Alvarez says they do “our team cheer, which is a bunch of words that we want to embody when we swim followed by ‘3, 2, 1, team!’” Then, “before we walk out, we stand backstage and do our power pose to bring confidence to our bodies.”
Of course, the chants weren’t done in vain as the women took home silver—marking Team USA’s first medal in 20 years. “We just wanted to peak here and have our best performance and we definitely did,” Alvarez adds.
