“I don’t get them just to get them,” she continues. “Like, one is a quote from my grandpa. It says, ‘Where you are, I have been, where I am, you will be.’ He used to tell us that all the time and he passed away, so that’s very sentimental to me.”
After the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, where Team USA took home a silver medal, Chiles got a set of Olympic rings on her right arm, matching the one Biles got following her 2016 Olympic debut in Rio. Close friends and teammates, Chiles and Biles, as the pair is known, also got matching tattoos of the word “Golden” in 2021 in honor of their national Gold Over America tour. “Our motto was ‘Everyone is golden. They shine bright.’ That’s what we were giving to the audience.”
Ink maintenance requires daily skin care all over her body. In addition to a trusty jar of coconut oil, Chiles uses Vaseline’s new ProVita B3 Serum-Burst Lotion in Luminous Glow, which, among other hydrating ingredients, contains niacinamide and antioxidants. “It’s a great tattoo enhancer,” says Chiles. “As tattoos get older, they tend to fade a little. This keeps my skin soft and really makes them pop.” Before and after practice she’ll also use the line’s new Supple & Soft formula to offset dryness. “Especially when I’m done, I’ll put it all over my body so I don’t feel too gritty. My problem areas are my wrists and my knees. I’ll take the chalk off and put the lotion on.”
As a young gymnast, Chiles was discouraged from applying her own lotion–her mother lathered her up instead–to prevent soft hands that might weaken her grip on the uneven bars. Around age 12, Chiles insisted on doing it herself. “As I got older, I was like, wait a minute, I think this is kind of a myth,” she laughs. “What does it matter if my hands are soft if I’m doing perfectly fine? The only thing we have to watch out for is that we’re not greasy so we don’t slip. But the Vaseline [product] is great because it absorbs quickly.”
At the Olympics, Chiles went all in with her glam, with looks that included subtle touches like carefully placed rhinestones under each brow or electric white eyeshadow. Off the mat, she keeps her makeup much simpler. “Day to day, I typically use Fenty’s concealer and foundation. My eyebrows are microbladed so I usually just gel them with something like Anastasia [Beverly Hills] brow gel,” Chiles says. “I use a lot of Milani, whether it’s the blush, the highlighter, or the bronzer. And I’m a lip girlie; Haus Labs has a lip pencil I like.”
She does splash out on her nails. During our chat, she holds up a long, blinged-out, textured set of tips, which she sports even when competing, having said they actually improve her performance since they’re “too precious and too good looking to be breaking.” Her technician, Dior Mulano (@clawzbydior), is based in Los Angeles, but Chiles will fly her to Texas or to big events she’s attending like New York Fashion Week. She admits it’s her biggest indulgence.