Women Athletes Play Their Sport -- Don't Sport Bikinis
"We are athletes who just want to be playing our sport.""I don't understand why we have to wear these kinds of clothes when it takes all the focus away from the sport that we love.""You have to be running, doing gymnastic moves [harder when you're wearing a bikini].""We never get attention for our medals or how well we do. In the media, it's all about the panties."Elisabeth Hammerstad, Norwegian women's handball team"I'm VERY proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team FOR PROTESTING THE VERY SEXIST RULES ABOUT THEIR 'uniform'.""The European handball federation SHOULD BE FINED FOR SEXISM.""Good on ya, ladies I'll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up."Pink, girl group Choice, American singer, songwriter"I can confirm that the EHF [European Handball Federation] will do all it can to ensure that a change of athlete uniform regulations can be implemented.""Significant efforts will be made in order to further promote the sport in the best way possible for everyone, regardless of gender."Michael Wiederer president, European Handball Federation
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| Norway team line up during 2018 Women's Beach Handball World Cup final against Greece on July 29, 2018 in Kazan, Russia. (Epsilon/Getty Images) |
Elisabeth Hammerstad of the Norwegian women's handball team does in actual fact, know quite well why the official uniform required of women playing her sport includes a bikini bottom. Her team, after all, has been advocating for the last fifteen years for different uniforms. Male players, they have long pointed out, compete in a uniform comprised of tank tops and shorts. And it's just what the women themselves would prefer to compete in.
It's harder, she points out, to concentrate on the sport, wearing a bikini. The uniform could conceivably slip out of place when the wearer is so energetically playing the game. Leaving a photographer with a pictorial scoop, capturing an embarrassing, unflattering or revealing picture, actually a photograph encapsulating all of these inconvenient details to the chagrin of the wearer. And it is patently unfair, when the women want to be able to concentrate on their game.
Games that women excel at leave the impression that they're less exciting, less skill involved; while endurance, strength and competence is required equal to men's games. Injecting a little more photogenic interest by having women wear a uniform that exposes and features women in revealing, skimpy outfits adds a special zing appreciated by male onlookers, not necessarily the women who tune in to view women excelling at physical endeavours.
The Olympic Games remain a man's world to command, even as women compete at a level comparable to men given the differences in their physical endowments. The German women's gymnastics team cut out bikini-cut leotards favouring instead full-body versions stretching to the ankles, with the German Gymnastics Federation stating the outfits represent a statement rejecting "sexualization in gymnastics".
Sport codes in athletic sports like beach volleyball, beach handball and gymnastics reflect men's preferences not women's. "It's about patriarchy and sexism. Let's be real here", stated Cheryl Cooky, a professor of American studies at Purdue University, specializing in gender and athletics. It has "a very strong foothold".
Current rules mandate that female athletes must don bikini bottoms "with a close fit and cut on an upper angle toward the top of the leg", while men are allowed to wear shorts as long as 10 centimetres above their knees, as long as they aren't "too baggy". The women determined it was time for a a rebellion. And for doing just that, setting aside the bikini bottoms for shorts, the Norwegian women's team was fined 1,400 euros each player by the International Handball Federation.
The rejected outfits are a measure forcing athletes to "better align with our cultural expectations for women". Women playing on national athletic teams are "powerful and dominant, strong and competitive", explained Cheryl Cooky, qualities that defy traditional norms of femininity. Forcing women to play handball while wearing bikinis is symbolic of the view that women and men are fundamentally at variance even at the highest levels of athletic competition.
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| Norway's beach handball players were each fined 150 euros for wearing shorts rather than t he required bikini bottoms. The team wore thigh-length elastic shorts in their bronze-medal match Sunday to protest the regulation bikini-bottom design. Norwegian Handball Federation via ABACAPress.com |
Labels: Bikini Bottoms, Norwegian Women's Beach Handball Players, Olympic Games, Rebellion
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, July 28, 2021
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