What was she wearing? Olympians take a stand against sexist outfit rules
Often what female athletes are wearing makes more headlines than their skills - and several teams have had enough
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Image: Picture Alliance/DPA | Marijan Murat
You can stretch the truth - a bit like Lycra. But when it comes to the treatment of female athletes, it turns out the stretchy synthetic fibres have done a better job than lip service to gender parity.
The Tokyo Olympics, which draw to a close on Sunday, have been hailed as a turning point for putting on the agenda the sexualisation of female athletes. But that it still comes down to the controversy caused by a few centimetres of cloth, speaks volumes of how far we haven't come.
This year's Games have been all about the unitard - the choice of Germany's women's gymnastics team as the kit they felt most comfortable to compete in. The full-body outfit stretches to cover the legs and in some variations the arms too. Until these Games, the convention was for female gymnasts to wear the leotard, high cut at the thighs, exposing the legs.
The choice of the German team was, according to the German Gymnastics Federation, a stand against how women athletes are made to "sex up" their look. The outfits female athletes wear, and their makeup, nails or hairstyles get press attention, sometimes more than their athletic prowess.
It's no surprise that one of the most-watched female sports at the Olympics is beach volleyball. The men's teams compete in loose-fitting tank tops and knee-length shorts, but the women's teams compete in bikinis.
Just days before the Olympics, the Norwegian women's beach handball team decided to switch out their bikini bottoms for fitted shorts as their choice of official team uniform. It earned them a €1,500 (R25,000) fine from the European Handball Federation (EHF) for "improper clothing".
That fine was picked up by the artist Pink, outraged by the ruling. She tweeted that she was proud of the team for "protesting the sexist rules about their 'uniform' ", and that the EHF "should be fined for their sexism".
The Games, which got their modern era start in 1896, have always had gendered dress codes. They've never strayed far from policing what women athletes wear and have helped fuel the media spectacle and the offensive comments and trolling in an age of social media.
Image: Norway’s Handball Federation
It was only in 1900, at the second edition of the modern Games, that women were allowed to take part. Of the 997 athletes only 22 women competed, in five sports - tennis, sailing, croquet, the equestrian events and golf in the Paris Games that year. The Games this time round in Japan are said to have had the highest parity in numbers of female and male competitors.
Back at the turn of the 20th century, women's tennis outfits featured high-collared dresses that grazed the ankles, with ballooning sleeves cuffed steadfastly at the wrists. These were meant to preserve "feminine modesty" rather than to allow freedom of movement for athletic performance.
Football outfits for women would, well into the 1930s, feature long-sleeved collared shirts buttoned to the neck, with long shorts. Lady Florence Dixie, a suffragette and president of the British Ladies Football Club, wrote in 1895: "There's no reason why football should not be played by women, and played well too, provided they dress rationally and relegate to limbo the straitjacket attire in which fashion delights to attire them."
This year, for the first time, the Olympic Games have featured skateboarding, surfing and BMX freestyle events. The debut of these three sports has included women competitors.
But the inclusion has come with another form of casual misogyny - trolls taking aim at women who dare to penetrate sports guarded by "dude culture" and "street culture" and that come with entrenched conventional masculinity and boys-only codes.
The outfits of the women competitors in skateboarding may at first glance seem to mimic men's skate culture ensembles of baggy trousers and loose-fitting shirts, tops and caps. But there were shifts, too, at the Olympics, in personal signatures and style. There were tank tops and fitted shirts, stacked braided bracelets and accessories, and tailored-cut bottoms over the boys' baggies.
Clothes as statement and protest are one part of taking a stand about the treatment of women in sport. But skateboarding silver medallist Rayssa Leal from Brazil put it unequivocally: "It's not right to think while you have to study you can't go and skateboard because skating is for boys - I didn't listen to that kind of message."
Leal is just 13 years old and took the podium with two other teenagers. Gold medal winner from Japan Momiji Nishiya is also 13 and Funa Nakayma, who bagged bronze, also for Japan, is 16.
They signal the arrival of a new generation of female Olympians shattering dude culture, and outdated dress codes. They're claiming the sports they love for themselves with their athletic excellence, their comfort levels and ultimately, their choices.
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