The leotards in girls’s sports activities are taking part in a harmful recreation. As female athletes continue to break down barriers and rake in record-high rankings, their outfits appear to develop smaller and smaller. It’s a development that seems to have an effect on a number of branches of ladies’s sports activities – from swimming to track-and-field – but it surely’s sparking probably the most dialog in girls’s school gymnastics.
“Why do the faculty gymnastics women not should put on leotards that match, and why don’t they should put on GK briefs beneath their leo?” requested content material creator and former gymnastics coach BayouBrandi on TikTok, referring to the high-cut briefs typically worn beneath leotards. Commenters mentioned they’d additionally seen this progressive sexualization in girls’s sports activities, noting that there’s a distinction between an outfit you pick your self (like a bikini on the seaside), and an outfit designed for you. “I’ve actually opted out of sure sports activities [because] of how exposing the uniform is,” one commenter wrote. Actually, a examine printed within the journal Sport, Education and Society discovered that 75 % of the ladies surveyed had seen women drop out of faculty sports activities resulting from issues about uniforms or physique picture.
Whereas we assist girls in no matter they really feel most comfy carrying, private autonomy is a element that appears to be lacking right here. Within the NCAA, leotards are primarily designed by the person coaches and their leotard reps, in response to College Gym News. Assistant coaches keep watch over developments and dig up inspiration on social media, presumably speaking to the athletes about their preferences. However in any other case, NCAA leotard regulations are comparatively imprecise, saying that “a student-athlete should put on a one-piece leotard and is allowed to put on any undergarments which can be the identical coloration of the leotard or are pores and skin tone in coloration.”
When you think about that these younger girls athletes lack any important company over what they put on (past an off-the-cuff dialog with their assistant coach), the discourse round their leotards feels particularly one-sided. And as former school gymnast Natalie Wojcik identified in a recent TikTok, the leotards aren’t the one difficulty. Her video highlighted a slew of feedback she had obtained on social media, all of which mentioned the skimpiness of her leotard reasonably than her athletic prowess. “Being a girl in sports activities is tough generally,” she captioned the publish. “I’m a 23 yr outdated girl. My physique is completely different than once I was a child,” she replied to a different remark, remarking that not all leotards have modified, however the our bodies carrying them have.
On an Olympic stage, girls’s leotards have additionally been used as a political assertion. In 2021, German gymnasts wore full-length unitards to the Tokyo Video games with the intention to push in opposition to the rampant sexualization in girls’s gymnastics. “We wish to ensure that everybody feels comfy and we [want to] present everybody that they’ll put on no matter they need and look wonderful, really feel wonderful,” said German gymnast Sarah Voss. This push for empowerment was particularly highly effective given gymnastics’s history of sexual abuse, setting the tone for extra feminine athletes to put on what they honestly really feel greatest in.
Past gymnastics, in 2021, the Norwegian girls’s seaside handball group was fined for refusing to play in bikinis, finally causing the rule to change. And extra not too long ago, the US track-and-field world had a polarizing leotard second after some of the kits for the 2024 Paris Olympics went viral. Whereas the male uniform included a tank and briefs, the featured choice for the ladies’s uniform was primarily a leotard with little-to-no protection across the gusset. “Wait my hoo haa is gonna be out,” commented Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall. The lengthy jumper has since said on the Group USA Media Summit that the leotards don’t seems to be as drastic in particular person, plus there are different choices for girls athletes to put on, together with shorts – however that doesn’t take away from the bigger dialog.
“I’ve by no means been consulted within the design,” Davis-Woodhall mentioned throughout a roundtable interview together with PS on the media summit in April. “For the subsequent Olympics, let’s go ask the athletes. How do you’re feeling while you compete in our uniforms?” Davis-Woodhall added. “All girls’s our bodies are completely different and I say the identical factor for males. Let’s make the uniforms for the individuals as a substitute of for the views of ‘Oh, that is gonna look cool on TV.’ Properly, which may not look cool on my physique. So let’s simply adapt to the athletes as a substitute of a present,” she informed the group.
Whether or not or not you consider the outfits in girls’s sports activities are getting smaller, athletes are there to compete, and their uniforms ought to function an asset, not a degree of discomfort. We will begin by together with athletes within the design course of in a extra significant approach, listening to their preferences (be it tinier leos or full-on unitards), in order that they’ll carry out to the perfect of their means. All girls in sports activities need to be dressed like champions, however that may’t occur till the athletes truly really feel comfy within the outfits they’re competing in. And sure, for some athletes which may imply including somewhat extra protection.
– Extra reporting by Alexis Jones
Chandler Plante is an assistant editor for POPSUGAR Well being & Health. Beforehand, she labored as an editorial assistant for Folks journal and contributed to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Group. In her free time, she overshares on the web, creating content material about continual sickness, magnificence, and incapacity.
Alexis Jones is the senior well being and health editor at PS. Her areas of experience embrace girls’s well being and health, psychological well being, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and continual situations. Previous to becoming a member of PS, she was the senior editor at Well being journal. Her different bylines will be discovered at Girls’s Well being, Prevention, Marie Claire, and extra.
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