For Liu, skating is both sport and self-expression.

“I love emphasizing how I feel, and I do that through fashion, through choreography, and through what music I skate to”, she says. “With skating, it feels like I can kind of do all of it in one. I can dance on the ice, and I can pick what I’m wearing. There are a ton of little outlets in figure skating, which is cool.”

That freedom extends to the way she approaches competition.

“I’m not really afraid to fail”, she says.

Part of that comes from knowing whose opinions matter. Rather than turning to the public for validation or criticism, Liu relies on the people she trusts.

“I have a really good team and a good group of people around me. For criticism or advice, I go to the people I know. I don’t really turn to the public.”

But there has also been a deeper shift in how she thinks about success.

“I used to be a perfectionist when I was a kid, but now I love when things are imperfect. There’s something so beautiful and human about that.”

“I’m all about experiencing life. It would be no fun if everything just worked out, if there were no bumps. I feel like I learn the most from the low points, so I can really enjoy the high points.”

Ask Liu why sport matters for girls and young women, and she comes back to one word: freedom.

“Sport is so liberating and it’s so freeing”, she says. “Being able to exercise your willpower and expend your energy – it’s such a cool thing.”

Artistic sports can offer another dimension.

“You can really explore that part of yourself while maintaining being an athlete.”

But Liu is equally clear about what can drive girls away.

“So many girls drop out of sports because there’s not enough body positivity surrounding sport”, she says. “They don’t think they look right for it.”

Figure skating has long carried rigid ideas about how women should look and present themselves. Liu believes things are beginning to change, albeit slowly.

When she returned to skating, there were questions about whether she would change her hair or remove her piercings.

Her answer was simple.

“I told them I wouldn’t come back. They were like, ‘What would happen if we told you to change your hair and stuff like that?’ And I was like, ‘Y’all won’t be seeing me.’”

She laughs, but the boundary mattered.

“At 18, I was like: I know my worth. It was so freeing.”

Liu sees signs of progress in the range of women now competing at the highest level.

“There are more girls on the bigger stages who are more muscular than what it used to be. I think it’s showing that people of different body types can still be elite athletes.”

But the double standards remain visible.

“Our packaging is so different between women and men in figure skating.”

When Liu returned to competitive figure skating, the media began to shape an all-too-familiar story about her and fellow U.S. skaters Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito: Who would win? Who would come out on top? Except that wasn’t their story.

“We’re really good friends”, Liu says.

Liu says women skaters have long been pitted against one another: “The higher-ups have always pitted women against each other, and even the media.”

This time, Liu and her friends decided to flip the script.

“We really pushed it. Anytime interviewers would ask sketchy questions, we’d shut it down really fast.”

They posted together, made TikToks together, and made their friendship impossible to ignore. Eventually, Liu noticed the narrative beginning to shift.

“We were put in the same article, but as a trio, which was nice. They used a friendship lens instead of a competitor lens.”

For Liu, that matters for the girls watching.

“Sport can be more fruitful if you’re friends with your teammates and competitors. We are teammates, essentially. We’re not always competitors. You can cheer for other people.”

And Liu does.

“I love when I compete with my friends because I get to watch them. I’d be crying watching my friends. It feels so much more meaningful to me to cry while watching someone else or be happy for someone else.”

When told that rivalry sells, Liu doesn’t hesitate:

“We are not meant to be sold.”

Then she considers it for a second.

“I guess it also proved that friendship sells.”

And laughs.

“I would much rather have friendship sell.”

“I genuinely don’t know what it is about women’s sports that makes people think we’re not athletes.”

At the Olympics, Liu experienced that disconnect first-hand. After skating what she describes as the best performance of her life, she found some of the attention focused not on her athletic achievement, but on her as a woman.

“I had just competed and skated the best I’d ever done.”

For Liu, that experience is part of a much bigger pattern.

“Women’s achievements and accomplishments haven’t been recorded in history accurately.”

“Our achievements are downplayed and men’s are just being super played.”

She sees the same inequality in the visibility that women athletes receive today:

“Viewership, broadcasting, our visibility and our screen time...it’s so much lower than men in sports.”

But for Liu, visibility is only part of the story. Getting women athletes on screen matters – so does what happens when the camera is turned on them.

Liu remembers one broadcast in particular. A channel that had filmed her program many times – and knew her choreography and movements – chose a camera angle that focused closely on her crotch and then replayed the shot in slow motion.

“I was like, ‘What are we doing?’”

Her coaches contacted the broadcaster.

“They were like, ‘Do not do that again. You guys know her program. What happened?’”

It did not happen again. But for Liu, the fact that it happened at all was revealing.

“That’s when I realized: we are recorded differently too.”

For Liu, the experience raised a bigger question about how women athletes are presented to audiences – from the camera angles used to film them to the clothes they are expected to compete in.

“Women are just seen differently,” she says.

The scrutiny didn’t end when Liu stepped off the ice. As a teenager, it followed her online.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Liu began spending much more time on social media.

“It was just so terrible for my mental health”, she says. “It sent me down a terrible spiral. ”

Eventually, she realized skating itself was not the problem.

“I didn’t hate figure skating. I didn’t like the toxicity that I found myself in.”

At an age when she was already navigating adolescence and enormous pressures as an elite athlete, online commentary became another voice telling her who she was supposed to be.

By age 18, something changed.

“I started getting confident in myself. I realized what I feel about myself is so much more important than what other people feel about me.”

Today, she largely stays away from what strangers are saying about her.

“I don’t want to know. Good or bad.”

For girls dealing with hostility or negativity online, she offers a simple analogue alternative:

“Lay off it a little bit. Read some books written by women.”

“Especially if you don’t have women around you to uplift you, I think turning to female literature is a great way to settle into yourself.”

Ask Liu what feminism means to her and her answer is straightforward.

“Equal opportunities, equal chances, equal rights, equal pay.”

She is equally clear about what feminism isn't.

“It’s not about lowering men; it’s about uplifting women.”

For Liu, some of the resistance to feminism comes from misunderstanding that distinction.

“Some people view [feminism] as a negative thing because they think it’s about trying to bring men down. But it’s actually about uplifting women.”

Ultimately, what she is asking for sounds remarkably simple.

“Being treated the same. Viewed the same.”

Then she pauses.

“It sounds like a dream, actually.”

Looking back, Liu can now name some of the inequalities she experienced but couldn't understand as a girl.

“As a woman – and when I was a girl – I feel like I suffered from the effects of misogyny and inequality of the sexes”, she says.

“As a girl, I never really saw it as that. I was just confused. I didn’t know why it was this way.”

Today, she wants girls to have something she had to find for herself: confidence in their own worth and what they are capable of.

“I hope to inspire other girls to stay confident in themselves and to know that they can do anything they want to do. There really are no limits.”

Her message is simple:

So, what would Liu say to a girl who is struggling with the pressure to perform, conform, or be perfect?

“Trust the process.

“As long as you’re doing it for yourself, and as long as you’re happy doing it and you want to…”

She pauses.

“Your thoughts really shape your reality. Make sure that you’re not letting other people form your thoughts for you.

“Just keep doing what you love.

“And don’t let anyone get in the way of that.”