Elite Sportswear: A Gendered Double Standard?
Back in July, The European Handball Federation made the controversial decision to fine Norway’s female beach handball team. The team were fined €150 per player, amounting to nearly €5000 for the whole team, because of the team's choice of kit for their match against Spain in The European Beach Handball Championships. The standard kit for a female beach handball team is a cropped top and bikini bottoms while their male counterparts wear long tank tops and shorts. The women’s team opted to wear shorts just like the men’s team instead of the usual bikini bottoms.
The decision to fine the Norwegian team caught plenty of attention around the world and sparked a conversation over the sexist rules surrounding clothing for female athletes, highlighting a double standard. Online fundraising pages were set up to raise money to pay for the fines and American popstar Pink even offered to pay the fine herself.
The Norwegian Handball Federation agreed to pay the fine and said that kit for female athletes should be “a free choice with a standardised framework.”
“Sport has a long way to go in liberating women’s bodies and the clothing they wear. At the end of the day, it should be about practicality and choice”
Many dress codes for female athletes like those in Norway’s beach handball team include skimpy shorts, bikini bottoms and cropped tops. Accusations of sexualizing women in sport is common as a result of these dress codes. Does wearing shorts like male athletes instead of bikini bottoms give women a disadvantage in a sport? Or, is it there because of archaic notions of the sexualised female body? Surely if bikini bottoms provided some sort of advantage in any way compared to shorts we would be seeing the men’s team in budgie smugglers?
This conversation is not new. For centuries, women’s bodies and clothing have been policed.
Dress codes are ubiquitous. Restaurants, golf clubs and bars often require specific attire for entry. A classic example of a dress code in sport is Wimbledon. To play at Wimbledon you must wear all white. And this applies both to men and to women.
Dress codes are there to be respected, and many of them are. The problem is, requiring women to wear sports clothes that are explicitly sexualising, detracts from the sporting performance and places the focus on the body as the spectacle. Women athletes train just as hard as men, and it should be their sporting prowess that we celebrate, not their sexualised body.
Women have found themselves in violation of dress codes time and time again. Often for the most ludicrous reasons.
Take tennis, for example. The only clear dress code for the sport is to wear “clean and acceptable” clothing and each Grand Slam can impose their own rules; Wimbledon imposes the all-white clothing rule.
Serena Williams has often been the subject of such discussions about dress. This year at Wimbledon, Williams entered Centre Court with a skirt which gave the appearance of a ball gown, signifying the sporting royalty that she is.
During the French Open 2018, Williams opted to wear an all-in-one catsuit which was said to assist her with circulation as she suffered from blood clots. The French Open then made the decision to ban the catsuit for future tournaments.
In the same year during the US Open, French tennis player Alize Cornet was given a code violation for taking her shirt off on court. Cornet realised that her shirt was on the wrong way around and turned away from the camera to put it on the right way, exposing the back of her sports bra. She was then given a code violation for doing so. This angered fans with many saying the rule was sexist and highlighted a double standard as male tennis players take their shirts off all the time and expose their bare chest when taking a break. The US Open did apologise for the code violation given but claimed that it would not have been issued if Cornet had changed her top on her bench instead of on court.
Sport has a long way to go in liberating women’s bodies and the clothing they wear. At the end of the day, it should be about practicality and choice. Choice should be available to teams and individuals and they should not be penalised for it. Dress code rules in sport are outdated and should be revised to fit with today’s women.