The pain behind the fame: LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne's latest viral TikTok offers rare glimpse of her lesser known side

Olivia Dunne is one of the most renowned student athletes, being exceptionally famous on TikTok, at LSU and in the gymnastics world. Though the social media darling has tons of followers, her true role is that of a student athlete.

This TikTok that she shared shows that being a prominent student athlete is not all it's cracked up to be. It certainly has its perks, as her social media profiles well know, but it has struggles too.

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Dunne used two pictures of herself to showcase this. The first is a promotional image of her in her leotard, looking bright and happy, with the caption "telling the media I'm a student athlete".

The second picture, which was was far less flattering, was captioned "being a student athlete". She was laid out on an ottoman, clearly overwhelmed by the amount of pressure on her and work that has to be done.

Through the post, Dunne gave a glimpse into the less than glamorous side of fame.

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Olivia Dunne is one of the most famous student athletes of all time

Olivia Dunne has become a student athlete at the exact right time. So many factors have converged to make her famous when that might have not been the case a couple of years ago.

Olivia Dunne is one of the most well-known student athletes

Social media has become exceptionally prominent in boosting the exposure of student athletes. Fans know them more closely than they did in the past, and TikTok is a big driver of that.

The NIL laws also make it so that student athletes can be more famous. Dunne can do commercials and sign deals, everything that college athletes of yesteryear just couldn't do. That only adds to her level of fame.

It also helps that she's been put in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, driving her fame through the roof and giving her millions of followers and more fans.